


the man who spoke with angels

by aleksandr_starshow



Category: Armie Hammer - Fandom, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Timothée Chalamet - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Android AU, Classism, Come Eating, Gen, M/M, Masturbation, Rimming, blowjobs while driving, kitty!, mild homophobia, mild sexism, oh look a cat, tags will be updated with each chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-02 19:12:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15802806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleksandr_starshow/pseuds/aleksandr_starshow
Summary: A long time ago, a man spoke with God. He asked God how he could absolve humankind of its suffering. When he died, he took that knowledge with him to the grave.Or so they thought.Five centuries later, when God is all but dead, Earth is overpopulated and humanity is on the brink of self-destruction. An android with a mysterious past teams up with an equally mysterious and disgraced billionaire to save the world. In the midst of poverty, chaos, and systems of oppression that seem impossible to dismantle, Timothée Chalamet and Armand Hammer must race against time and an ancient enemy to not only absolve humankind of its suffering, but to also find peace within themselves and each other.THIS FIC IS ON HIATUS. Not because of anything bad but because I need to re-work some plot points and add some layers! Thank you all for your support <3 <3





	1. nascence.

   

 

         

             

 

Also in 2392, a boy by the name of Willem Looney, was rummaging through a box in a run-down antique shop. He was a self-proclaimed photographer and for a 12-year-old, rather talented. But his talent went largely unnoticed because Willem had no affluence and suffered because of it. He’d never known his father and his mother had died when he was seven, died from a disease neither of them had a name for, collapsed on stage during a back-alley Broadway show. He carried with him a vintage camera, the kind that captured moments in a single take and froze them on glossy pieces of paper.

Sometimes, he could sell his photographs for five credits a piece, a decent price, he thought, though aware that people only paid a smidgen more out of pity. _What a lovely boy_ , they’d say, shaking their heads sadly. _I wonder where his parents are? To be out here so young?_

Willem often ventured into shady shops that sold the strangest odds and ends from eras nobody paid much attention to. He found that older items created the strangest and most interesting subjects. During one of his rummages, he found a box full of knick knicks ( _Playboy_ magazines _,_ rubber balls and jacks, marbles, a lacy lampshade, a crumbling wooden boat, a bridge to some orchestral instrument, and a stack of really, really old circuitry). It was the circuitry that intrigued him. At home, well, the place he _called_ home, which was more a dilapidated shed than anything else, he had a stack of circuit boards, ram sticks, and the likes, towering to the ceiling. Sometimes, he’d grab a logic board and stare at all the little lines and dots and strange towers and think of how they reminded him of miniature cities. He had a knack for piecing together pieces of circuitry and wires. His intuition simply told him where each piece needed to be connected to work. He could see the flow of electrons as easily as one could tell that the sky was grey. He understood this better than he understood people.

And so it goes.

Willem decided to spend his remaining weekly allowance of thirty credits on the memory board he’d found in the shop. He’d go hungry for the next four days, probably, but such things were worth it to him. The owner, who didn’t speak Chendry at all, just raised an eyebrow, rang up the credits, handed Will back his card, and allowed the boy to take the memory board home.

Over the next five years, Willem would come to find that his talent didn’t really reside in photography but invention. He found himself obsessed with a creation, an idea put into human form. He dug deeper into the antique shops in his sector, bought ancient literature on anatomy and physiology, on psychology, on electrical engineering, on biomedical engineering, and devoured them ravenously. He'd never seen Chendry written down before but he was quickly able to decipher the cursive symbols. He discovered an ancient kinoker, with clips from an even older movie on it. Willem, enraptured, played the clips, from a movie called _Call Me by Your Name_ , as he worked on his new project. He had no idea what the movie was about and lamented over the fact that he didn’t have access to the whole thing. Did the boy Elio ever tell Oliver how he felt? Did they have a happy ending? Willem wished, with all his heart, that they did and at night, when he lay awake, his brain moving a thousand miles a second, he came up with scenarios where Elio and Oliver met again and fell truly in love with each other and lived in a beautiful sky-apartment with flowers in the windows.

Willem longed for a love like that. His mother had been a romantic though he’d never known what that meant. He was told by his mother’s coworkers that love was for fools and it was no use wasting time on it. Willem had agreed at first: idealism, romanticism, and love certainly didn’t make dinner, or pay rent. And when his mother died, Willem had let the idea of love, like a red balloon, loose to float away, to never be caught again.

Or so he thought.

“Is it a video?” he said in halting English. “Is it a video…”

He had no idea what that sentence meant but it was beautiful to him.

And so Willem continued with his obsession, building it around the images that single phrase built in his head, a phrase in a language no longer spoken, except by the governmental elite and the Cleric. He searched forever for a Stone Language dictionary, but found none, and so the phrase remained burned into his memory and its definition became his own definition of himself. As did his project.

When he was done, he’d constructed a boy who reminded him of Elio, but with longer hair, and wiser eyes. When he was done, he’d constructed his first friend.

When he was done, he’d constructed the cataclysm that would forever change the world.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heya. :-)  
> so this is my first au, like, ever. some of you have heard me rally against aus for forever (as in i can't write them to save my life) but... people have been posting these science fiction prompts on tumblr and i have not been able to stop thinking about them. so, at 4 o-clock in the morning, i came up with a story and have decided to write it!  
> if you see bits and pieces you recognise from famous science fiction works, you're probably right: i'm not going to pretend this story is wholly original, but i do think my take on it might be somewhat unique? maybe.  
> the chapter titles are from a video game.  
> chendry is a constructed language of my own creation.  
> the venus project is a real thing.  
> this is a love story.
> 
> i hope you all enjoyed it <3 concrit is appreciated! <3


	2. the call.

 

you were fleeting, burning so bright like a comet and then quickly diminished and only stardust remains, grains of your life on my tongue and on my lips.

\- unknown

 

⋘  12  y e a r s   l a t e r . . .  ⋙

 

“Wait a minute, aren’t you--”

“No.”

“But you really look like--”

“I’m not.”

“Do you get that a lot?”

“No,” Armie growled. “Fuck off.”

With a tiny _yip_ , the woman with too much floppy hair and a mouth the size of a rosebud scurried off into some dark alley. Armie glowered after her before to the main door of the office building. He pressed a thumb against a pad, stood rock still, and was scanned inside. Outside, the sun was setting. Night fell rapidly in the city due to not just the nearly permanent cloud cover, but also because of the actually permanent fog. The fog had accrued for generations, centuries, and settled, covered all the lower territories in a dreary, impenetrable mist. Centuries of human filth, of carelessness, of corporate irresponsibility had given way to its own monster that hid things the corporocrats would shudder to think about, enemies of their own creation. Things with gnarly fangs and claws and deformities, things that lurked, things that hunted, things that waited for the perfect moment to attack.

It was there that Armie sought assistance. Armie glanced behind him and saw the shapeless shadows lurking just beyond the plexiglass doors. They gnashed their teeth and slobbered at the sight of him. He grimaced. He’d have a fight on the way out. He wondered if the floppy haired woman had found safety, if she even required safety, if she was even human to begin with.

He rose to the twenty-first floor and stepped out of the airlift where he was greeted by a very young, very pretty but stern blonde woman with a steely gaze, and a short, dark-haired man who looked older but seemed younger than his female companion.

“Captain,” he said, nodding his head. “Lieutenant.”

“Driver,” Captain Ronan said. “Pleasure, as always.”

“What’s a driver want with a product of PerGen?” inquired Lieutenant Delli Santi.

“That’s for me to know,” Armie said, following them down a long, chilly hallway. One wall was a waterfall but instead of making the hall appear fancy and elite, it only caused it to feel dank, heavy, and humid. “And for you to never find out.”

Saoirse snickered. “That’s my partner you’re insulting, Driver.”

“You don’t seem upset.”

Delli Santi’s upper lip curled. “We’re not here for masturbation toys,” he said.

“Should I decorate your face with my fist?”

Saoirse stopped at the end of the hall, allowed for a retinal scan, turned to face them and said, “Boys, play nice. We’ve all got to earn our paychecks somehow.”

Armie smirked. “Right. Traceurs; that’s what you are, yeah? Hardest job in the fleet, least amount of respect.”

“Like cab drivers,” Delli Santi said.

Armie couldn’t disagree.

Saoirse clapped her hands together just once. The sound rang out across a massive hall with a ceiling that disappeared into equivocality. Behind them were balconies covered with perforated metal sheets, like a prison. A metal rod spanned from wall to wall just above Armie’s head. Saoirse raised her hands as though conducting an orchestra and demonstrating the climax of a most wondrous symphony. Lights dimmed and sleek, black pods began to appear, almost like they were coming out of the wall itself, along the rod. They formed a line. The first pod halted right in front of them and opened like a flower in bloom (though none of them would understand the analogy as no one in that room in that moment had ever seen a flower in reality).

“Hello,” said a young woman as she posed. Leather straps were wrapped around her ankles and wrists but she still had room to move and lacked the strength to tear her restraints apart, which Armie found to be ridiculous. But Pleasurables weren’t meant to be fighters and in order to have a Pleasurable who could fight, he’d have to custom order… and that would cost in the tens of thousands, starting. This Pleasurable hairless except for the flowing purple hair falling in graceful sheets down the sides of her head and down her back. She had small breasts, long, slender legs, and dainty fingers. “I am… Amanda Rose. How may I serve you tonight?”

Armie stared at her. Could he imagine laying in bed with her? Could he imagine her lips wrapped around his cock? Could he imagine his fingers deep inside of her or perhaps her fingers inside of _him_?

“No,” he said. “Definitely not.”

Amanda Rose didn’t even have the updates to look offended as her pod closed and moved forward and down the line. Another pod took its place.

“Where is it going?” he asked, squinting as he followed the line of the metal rod.

“They’re discontinued models,” Delli Santi responded stiffly. “They’re being scanned for reusable parts. The parts are salvaged and the rest of them… goes to the furnace.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s continue.”

“Hi there, handsome, I’m Samantha Grey,” said another woman, younger looking, with wider hips, strawberry blonde hair and freckles on her face and shoulders. Captain Ronan had her arms crossed over her chest, her face stony, but Armie had known her long enough to see she disapproved of the PerGens before her. Surprisingly, Armie valued her opinion. He stood for a moment, imagined Samantha Grey riding his face, his tongue buried inside her. Then he imagined him riding her face, her tongue buried inside him.

“Fuck, no,” he said. “Keep going.”

“Hey there, babe, I’m Caroline--”

“No.”  
  
“Daddy, won’t you fuck me? I’m a sweet girl, I promise. I’m Eliza but--”

“No.”

“Suck my cunt, you horny bastard. Fuck my throat until I choke--”

“ _No_.”

“Hi, I’m Theresa--”

“I’m Alexis--”

“Won’t you play with your kitten--”  
  
“Can you help a little girl out?”

“I want you to fill all three holes--”  
  
“Can your cock make me scream?”

“Okay, stop!” Armie said loudly. This was turning out to be a waste of his time. He was also feeling supremely embarrassed. “ _Stop_ , stop, stop. These are _terrible_. Who the _fuck_ …Just--no. These are _not_ the droids I’m looking for.”

Saoirse looked approving in spite of herself. “Perhaps it would help if you narrowed down your interests?”

Armie scowled at her. “With all due respect Captain, I’m not here to go into my list of kinks.” Delli Santi snorted.

She shrugged. “Suit yourself, Driver. I would suggest going through the remaining models then. If none of these are to your liking, come back in a month, I’m sure we’ll have more then."

Armie pinched the bridge of his nose, rolled his eyes, and then exhaled noisily. “Fine. Continue.”

It was a good thing he listened.

The next pod opened and at first glance, Armie thought it was another girl, with short, dark brown hair that fell in waves against her face and ended in curls. The absence of breasts wasn’t even telltale. But his eyes wandered down the lean torso, the narrow hips, and the long, thin legs. They rested on what was between those legs and Armie felt a heat stir inside of him. It wasn’t that anatomically male Pleasurables were rare. They just weren’t, statistically speaking, discarded as often. They weren’t as popular but they weren’t lacking demand either. But it was the maybe the second time Armand Hammer had laid eyes on a male Pleasurable. The first one had been a massive bear of a man and Armie had shown no interest.

But now…

Armie gazed at the penis nestled so softly between the boy’s legs. It was the same colour as the rest of him, and like most of the other models, he was also generally hairless. Armie wanted to hold that penis in the palm of his hand. Wanted to taste it. Even then, as the boy stared shyly at him, it was leaking. Armie imagined wrapping rope around the shaft, tightening it, depriving the boy of an orgasm.

“He’s salivating,” Delli Santi said with an edge of disgust.

Captain Ronan shot daggers at him.

Armie willfully forced his eyes upward: _fuck_ , that face made it all even better, the pointedness of the nose, the sharp lines of the jaw, the gaunt cheeks, prominent cheekbones, the heavy brows and deeply set doe eyes laced with lashes Armie could even see from where he was standing. And those lips... _fuck, those lips_ … They were stained a subdued blood red and Armie wanted those lips everywhere on him. Oh yeah, he could be satisfied with a PerGen like that.

“What’s your name?” he called.

“Timothée.”

 _Fucking hell, that voice_. That fucking voice, so soft and sultry and innocent.

If a place for evil men existed, Armie was absolutely positive he was going there when he died. If he wasn’t sure of it before, he was definitely sure of it then.

“And how would you serve me, Timothée?”

The PerGen actually took a moment to answer. Uncertainty? Shyness? Damn good coding, that was.

“I can be whatever you want me to be,” the PerGen answered in that same voice, the voice that shot painful spikes of heat straight to Armie’s core. “I can fall in love with you. I can be your sex slave. I can do whatever you wish and more.”

“More like what?”

Again, the model paused as though it actually had to think before responding. “I can cook and clean. I can make for a perfect dinner companion. I can play you the piano. I can be whatever role you wish me to be.”

Armie frowned. It was highly unusual for older model Pleasurables to be so versatile. He stared hard at Timothée who, under all that shyness, gazed back at him with almost the same hardness. It was like he was determined to prove himself, to prove something, to prove he was worthy of Armie’s attention. Normally, Armie found such kitten behaviour gross and overdone in Pleasurables, the blatant obsequiousness, the sheer _overacting_. But Timothée’s face spoke of something more, something indiscernible. It was that very mystery that Armie wanted to rip apart and explore.

 _I am born of violence_.

He turned to Captain Ronan. “How much?”

Her lips tightened. “Six thousand credits.”

Armie whirled on her. “ _What the flying fuck_? You’re gonna charge me six thousand fucking credits for a fucking fifth-rate Pleasurable that you’re otherwise going to discard if I don’t purchase? Have you gone fucking _insane_?”

“You want it badly enough, then you’ll pay.”

 _Cold-hearted woman,_ Armie thought angrily. How entitled he sounded. Entitled to pleasure for cheap. _Cunt_. “Forget it then.”

Saoirse paled. “You wouldn’t.”

“Fuck yes I would.”

She waltzed right up to him, her face an inch from his, despite him being nearly a head taller. She smelled like silver and something sweet. “Yes,” she whispered, lips grazing his jawline, right below his ear. Armie had to hold his breath to hear her. “You will. Because I know who and what you are.”

_NO._

He pushed her away violently.

“You’re full of shit,” he said. All hints of arousal were gone. He was very, very cold. “You’re insane.”

Delli Santi watched them from a distance. He was poised, ready to jump in if it came to a fight, but with no signal from Captain Ronan, he stayed his ground.

The words that left her lips drenched him in ice. “You purchased Death.” Her voice was soft, a little sing-song like a taunting lullaby. Her body was back up against his and even through her laser-proof vest and the FoFiShi that protected her, he could feel her heat. It was stirring up the thoughts inside his head. “I know because I have, too.”

Armie mustered all of the disgust he could and a lot of it wasn’t faked; he was genuinely disgusted by her. “I’m not as crazy as you.”

“I know you talked to Magik and his Jester,” Saoirse said ever so quietly, her voice barely audible.. Armie’s hand was a fist.. “I know they did you a favour, Inmate Four...Two...Two...Three...Zero...A...Six...Eight…” She emphasised each number, punctuated them, made them thrum against Armie’s skin. “ _Armaaand...Douglas… Haammer_ …” she dragged out his name, wielding it like one wields a barbed whip. “Purchase the toy. Or…” She let the threat hang.

Armie grabbed her by the collar of her blouse. In one swift motion, Delli Santi had his weapon drawn and aimed right at Armie’s head but Saoirse held up a hand, stopping him.

“If you out me,” he said, an imperceptible hiss, “I will out you.”

When she grinned, it was more like a snarl, with her lips pulled back and her eyes fierce. “I’ve died six times. What makes you think

                                                                                                               I’m afraid 

                                                                                                                        to die

                                                                                                                                again?”

He aggressively released her and moved away. “I can’t afford it,” he said finally. “Six thousand credits is more than I make in three months. You should know that.”

Saoirse looked ready to kill. Armie figured she must be really desperate for funds. He wondered what for. _Would_ she actually out him? Did it even matter? He really couldn’t afford her price.

He turned his gaze back to Timothée. He hadn’t moved much.

“Just buy the fucking toaster, you sicko,” Delli Santi said crassly.

Armie laughed mirthlessly. “‘Toaster’? Haven’t heard that one in a long time, not since they, y’know, _stopped looking like fucking toasters._ ”

Delli Santi was stumped.

Armie rolled his eyes. The Timothée model was a beautiful specimen. He couldn’t afford it and now that he knew his secret was no longer a secret, the longer he stayed in that building, the more uncomfortable he felt. An antsiness was threatening to take over him. Yet it was...it was as though he was in limbo. Like he was waiting for something to happen. And there Timothée was, with his beautiful lips, and his perfectly engineered penis, and the tender fabric of his skin…

He wanted him.

         He also wanted to run. 

Even though used Pleasurables only had a lifespan of three months instead of their original six. Sometimes, he paid for them and received less. But Saoirse rarely scammed him and when she shot too high, she usually compromised.

“I’m not paying 6cs for a used PerGen product. Maybe if he was SyniGen… But no, I can’t. Burn him.”

“No!” came an anguished cry as the pod began to move towards the scanning station. Armie looked up and was stunned to see that the model Timothée was struggling against his restraints, reaching his arms out. “No! _Please!_ Please don’t send me to the furnace! I don’t want to burn!”

Armie looked over at Saoirse and was shocked to see that she was also surprised. Even Nick Delli Santi was staring at the Timothée model in confusion.

“Please, please, _oh God_ , please--” He was pulling so hard at his restraints, Armie could see the redness welling on his skin. “I don’t want to burn. Please---please---please don’t let me burn--I’m real! I’m real! I’M REAL PLEASE--!”

Saoirse was frozen. Armie gaped. “I---what do we do? What--is that--that’s not a normal programmed--”

“Please, please please--” Timothée was in so much pain. Armie could see the tears that appeared on his cheeks. “I’M A REAL BOY. PLEASE! _PLEASE_. DON’T--DON’T DO THIS TO ME--PLEASE DON’T--!!!!”

“Stop it,” Armie said.

“ _What_?” asked Delli Santi.

“Stop the pod!”

“It’s--it’s just his programming--” Delli Santi sputtered.

“That’s not programming, that’s--”

Timothée’s wails escalated. His wrists were rapidly becoming rivers of red. “PLEASE, DON’T DO THIS. DON’T. I DON’T WANNA BURN! PLEASE. I’LL DO ANYTHING-- _ANYTHING_ \--”

Armie came to a decision.

“STOP THE POD!” He yelled and he was on the move. He dashed in between pods to get to Timothée’s. “STOP THE POD, _GOD FUCKING DAMNIT_ , RONAN.”

“I can’t!” Saoirse shouted. “It’s--it’s automated--”

_You gotta be fucking kidding me!!_

Armie threw himself at Timothée’s pod, his fingers frantically prying at the leather bonds, trying to rip, trying to tear. “FIGURE OUT A FUCKING WAY TO STOP THIS THING!” he roared. Timothée’s body was pressed against his. Blood made Armie’s fingers slick.

“Please, God, please, please just fucking help me, I’m real, I’m a real boy, I promise, _I can prove it to you_ , I can prove it, I can prove it--”

“Shhh, shh, I got you, I got you, we just gotta--” But Armie wasn’t making any progress. He had no weapons on him. He had nothing sharp and the pod was only a couple metres from the scanning station and then the furnace. He glanced behind briefly, trying to find Ronan so he could have her toss him her gun. But she was strangely absent in the middle of this crises. _What the fucking fuck--_

“Please, please, save me,” Timothée begged, his face soaked with tears, throat muscles tight in agony, his whole body trembling. The pod entered the scanning station and they were drenched in laser light. “I don’t wanna burn, I don’t, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, I just wanna live, I don't wanna go--”

Timothée had bitten his lower lip so hard in his anguish that blood speckled his chin. The scanning station beeped and fizzled and beeped some more and Armie realised that it was scanning him, too, and since he was alive, the station probably was confused; it wouldn’t recognise anything useful in Timothée’s model. He could feel the boiling heat from the furnace. He felt the hairs on his skin curl from the blaze. Timothée was sobbing and begging wordlessly against his shoulder. Armie drew in a deep breath and wrapped his arms around Timothée’s body and waited for death.

The pod shuddered. Plastic melted. Armie felt his arm burn.

And then he was falling.

 

                                            Falling.

 

                                                                                              Falling.

 

He and Timothée had tumbled to the floor, battered from the partially melted remains of the pod, Timothée bent at a strange angle as he was still strapped in. Armie looked up from his crumpled position and saw that Saoirse was still standing, gun raised, pointed at what looked like a control box off to the side of the room. He could see that the tip was still red, indicating it had been recently fired. Panting, Armie tried to drag himself and Timothée further away from the furnace but the pod was impossibly heavy and Timothée was bound by the leather straps. He was cut up and bruised. His heart was hammering in his chest, Armie could feel it. He could see Timothée swallow over and over again. Could see the pupils dilated in fear. He could see the way Timothée’s muscles moved beneath his skin. He could see the tears that had not yet spilt.

It was a work of art. It was genius coding for a Pleasurable. A model with so much attention to detail - hell, Timothée’s skin even had _pores_ , Armie was so close he could count them - was usually worth millions and owned by the corporocrats.

They were both sweating. Armie looked at Timothée’s face but the android seemed to have gone into shock; he had a faraway stare in his eyes.

“Do you mind getting the restraints off of him?” Armie demanded through gritted teeth. Wordlessly, Saoirse came over and shot the bands off. Armie dragged himself to his feet and helped the android up. Timothée’s chest was still heaving. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. But Mekka don’t need to breathe…

“ _I’m still alive_ ,” Timothée whispered, seemingly stunned by the fact.

Armie turned to Saoirse. “I’m taking him. And I don’t have six thousand credits to give you either but you and your pet rat aren’t going to stop me.”

Her face was shadowed, conflicted. Her voice was hoarse. “I saved your arse.”

“I don’t fucking care. Box this one up and have it delivered to my complex. And if you out me, I will find you and I will kill you.”

Still thoroughly shaken, Armie untangled himself from Timothée’s grip, and as he pushed the android towards Captain Ronan, he dislodged Saoirse’s gun from her grip. It clattered to the floor where Armie kicked it out of her reach and then dove for it. When he jumped back to his feet, his burnt arm was throbbing, but he had her weapon in his hand.

“I’m taking this.”

And with that, he left the hall. When he exited the building, he shot blindly and furiously into the darkness, pushing back the fog shadow creatures until they howled and whimpered and scampered away in search of easier prey.

 

_Fuck everything._

 

_I am born of violence._

 

_My existence is an act of violence in itself._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no worries, nick delli santi and saoirse ronan are actually good guys.  
> the death thing will be explained further in a future chapter. :-)


	3. first confluence.

 

If only he realized this ship is more than metal  
There's friendship in the wiring, and so lonely  
If only he realized this ship has many levels  
There's pleasure in here hiding, come find it

\- clipping., _All Black_

 

and on fire we shall be, our lives a river unmade, swallowed up by the sun, only for our souls to spread light and life

\- unknown

 

“Good evening, Mr. Hammer,” a smooth, feminine voice said as Armie entered his flat. The door locked into place behind him. He shed his jacket and vest, stepped neatly out of his boots.

“Liz, You know I hate it when you address me like that,” he said, ducking into his living room.

“I know,” Liz said. “But you are the master of the house.”

Armie groaned. “It’s not much of a house, Liz.”

“I’m aware,” she responded. “I have seen houses. They do not exist here.”

Armie raised an eyebrow and nodded in agreement. “Damn right about that. City ordinances wouldn’t ever dictate any amount of land be spent on a house. Impractical, really.”

“...but it would be so nice, wouldn’t it?” She sounded wistful.

The living room was stark, dimly lit. One wall was a window that overlooked the housing blocks all around him. He had a futon in one corner and a desk in the middle of the room with a small rolling chair on one side. He had a single chair, pleather, that reclined on the other side of the desk. It had scratch marks on one side and a stain on another but Armie loved that chair. It was one of the few items he’d kept with him through the past couple of years.

“It would be nice, yeah,” he said, grabbing his controller and plopping down in the chair. “But not in this shithole. Maybe somewhere outside the city.

“With flowers.”

Armie frowned. He thought of the black pods.

“Your mind is preoccupied yet again, Mr. Hammer. Did you not find the toy you were looking for?”

Armie leaned back and closed his eyes. The word “toy” seemed out of place. “I don’t know what I found, Liz. I really don’t. But I found something all right.” He let out a breath and added, more as a musing than anything else, “I found something…” He let his arm dangle over the side of the chair, moved his hand to a pocket in the arm and pulled out a cigar.

“Light, please,” he said.

A metal contraption came down from the ceiling; a small grey sphere with a giant lens in the front, like an eye. It peered at him curiously. Actually, it looked the way it always did, but Armie had known this contraption for so long that he could read its expression even when nothing changed. He’d called Captain Ronan insane, but maybe he was really the crazy one. The eye was definitely peering at him and it was definitely curious. A tiny, spidery arm appeared on the side of the contraption and reached forward to light Armie’s cigar.

“Thank you, Liz,” he said and leaned his head back again.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Hammer,” was her cordial reply before she zipped away again. But he heard her voice all around him, the only companion he’d had since he’d taken the plunge, the only friend. At first, he thought maybe he was stupid for considering her a friend. She had no body, really, no physical form. The eye was just an outlet for her existence, which relied solely on the Ansible. If the Ansible went out, she’d disappear. She’d die. But as they lived together and Armie confided in her, he realised he loved her in a way, any way a super lonely man could love a disembodied voice, he supposed. She had become more than the voice of his humble abodes, she had become a voice of reason, of dreams, of something more than the despair and self-loathing he’d felt daily. It’d come to a point where he no longer felt comfortable with her doing all the household chores and so they did them together. He knew that when he slept, she disappeared along the Ansible, travelled distances he could only dream of, explored consciousnesses of humans across the globe, maybe the galaxy, maybe the entire federal sector. He was afraid to ask. He didn’t dare question her but he felt wildly jealous when she was gone, when he woke and she was far away.

Loneliness turns all rational thought into madness.

No one liked being alone. Not all the time.

And to think he’d once been so audaciously gregarious and _fun_ , the one who stood at the head of boardroom tables, behind podiums, in the center of the crowd with a drink in his hand and people leaning in to catch every word to leave his lips. He’d become an actor, but still held the position of C.E.O. of his father’s corporation until… well, until he fucked up.

“I don’t like ruminating thoughts, Mr. Hammer,” Liz said.

“Well, it’s a good thing you can’t read my mind.”

Fuck, he imagined he could feel her gaze on him. In his mind, she was lithe like a dancer, not the dancers at the bars and clubs, but rather the ones who created melodies with their movements. In his mind, she was tall and elegant. In his mind, her body would fit to his. In his mind, she had a smile that could light up a room.

“It’s a good thing, yes,” she agreed. “You should tell me about your night’s purchase.” He wondered if she’d noticed the burn on his arm and his clothes.

“Mm…” Armie puffed on his cigar for a moment, recalling the curls in the boy’s hair, the freckles on his face, the plane of his stomach, the perfection of his penis. He thought about his hands in that hair, on that face, his lips on that stomach, that penis down his throat. “You’ll meet him soon.”

“Ahhh, a boy!” she said delightfully. He could imagine her twirling around him, picture the dress she was wearing and the way it flowed with her movements.

Yeah, okay, he was no less sane that Ronan. He sighed ruefully.

“This will be a good change for you,” she said.

“I’m not new to boys.”

“You definitely are _not_!” and she seemed oddly proud of this, “But it will be a nice change from the lackluster toys you’ve been bringing home. Much less capricious than usual, no? Shall I excuse myself from your first meeting, as always?”

“As always,” Armie repeated. He felt jealousy strike him again because he knew that even though first meetings were always kind of fun, he knew that she left to go wander and that she did things he couldn’t imagine and he couldn’t be there to see and experience those things because he was simply human...and she was not.

“But second meetings--” she began.

“--will be for introductions,” he finished. “Unless something goes wrong.”

“Fabulous!” She was much more excited about this than he was. Not that Armie wasn’t excited. As of late, he’d felt moments of vague intrigue and nothing else. When he’d first started purchasing Pleasurables, back before everything was shot to shit, back before he’d lost the company and his career, he’d been skeptical, but enthusiastic. Now though, he was anxious, nervous…

...afraid.

And _hungry_.

He’d been horny for months. Alone for years. And it was like he was charged to the max, like he was going to explode soon if he didn’t find an outlet.

“Do you need me to help you?” Liz asked and he could see her nodding at the budding bulge in his trousers.

“As much as you are fucking awesome at helping me with such things, I think this one I need to do alone.”

“Okay, sweetie.” And like that, she was gone. Normally, when people bought voicemekka (that’s what he called them, he didn’t like the term ‘servicemekka’ because this voiceover was much more than that, she was a person to him), they didn’t bond the way Armie did. Voicemekka didn’t just leave without asking if anything else needed to be done. Voicemekka didn’t vanish into the abyss, they simply went idle. Voicemekka didn’t leave until formally dismissed.

“I miss you,” he said, unsure if Liz could hear him or not. She didn’t respond. Armie sighed again and reached a hand into his trousers.

 

 

 

 

**Rise, Citizens of Leetia. The day is new. Let us bow together. Let us pray.**

Armie stared at the window for a shrewd moment, his eyebrows knitted, face drawn tight. On the window was an image of Hegemon Drusilla Mobley Hammond, the immortal symbol of the American Empire, and its global constituents. Her skin was pale and stretched over her bones in a way that should have been grotesque but had been done so graciously, so elegantly, she looked ethereal and ageless. Her hair was long and white and it fell in glossy sheets over her shoulders. Her eyes were sunken, but piercing in their blueness. She reminded Armie of something _other_ , and _other_ in this case was dangerous.

He got to a knee. Anything less would result in a punishment, a loss of limb or something equivalent. They didn’t pray to a deity in an alternate plane but to a structure maintained for hundreds of years, a government that thrived on reducing individualism and free thought, that thrived on consumer slavery, that spoke virtuously of itself.

He prayed.

And stood.

And he sat on the edge of his futon and watched, disinterested, as the image of the Hegemon disappeared to be replaced by the news. Twenty million Canadian refugees in Japan. The Kingdom of Arabia declaring war on the State of Israel. The anniversary of the breaking of the treaty between the United States and Japan and the formation of the East Asian Empire. The Juneau Desecration. The Olkiluoto Fallout Perimeter. A crater in Columbia. A DMZ between Eastern Europe and Russia. Riots, bombings, mass suicides. Corpocracies writing and re-writing food ration compromises. The rice. Fuck, the _rice_. So much fucking rice and the viruses that came with it. Ghettos. Population restrictions being re-negotiated.

Jaw clenched, Armie turned away. As promised, Liz had disappeared into the unknown and Armie didn’t even have time to feel that familiar spike of jealousy when his door beeped and a shute opened next to it. A box slid into view.

Armie strode swiftly towards it, lifted it out of the shute, and dragged it towards the bathroom. His bathroom, like the rest of his flat, was small. But aside from three dishes in the kitchen sink, the flat, overall, was very clean. Armie wasn’t particularly fastidious but he maintained proper hygiene, kept his belongings few, and didn’t have a huge knack for decor.

He opened the box by hand because he knew how fragile Mekka could be in the earliest stages of their unboxing. Every unboxing had to be done carefully. He pulled out the plexi-crate and drew in a breath when he saw Timothée’s boxed form, crumpled, barely discernible from a lump of pale clay. He reached over and plugged the tub and manually turned on the water. As the tub filled, Armie dared himself to look at the lump of Mekka before him. Long, limp legs, like rubber, ill-defined, hairless, a lump for an abdomen, the torso curled in on itself, arms looking like noodles. The smooth surface of a scalp. Eyes closed, just barely slits in a pixelated face. Definitely not the epitome of beauty Armie had seen the day before.

Armie’s heart was hammering. Captain Ronan may jack up prices out of desperation, but she didn’t try to sell him something he didn’t want, she didn’t sell him faulty product.

Water spilled over the plexi-crate and leaked into the porous clay thing inside. Armie hated this part so he got up and left the bathroom. He waited.

And waited.

And paced.

When the pacing didn’t help, , he dimmed the window, and sat down in his pleather armchair and closed his eyes, his fingers tapping anxiously on his knees. He was keenly aware of the presence of his heart, the way it sat in his chest cavity, the way it pumped, the way blood shot through his veins to his extremities. His breathing matched a slow, steady rhythm as he focused on the intricacies of his circulatory system. Even the city din could not drown out the beat of his own heart.

Armie was unaware how long he meditated.

A soft breath touched his nose. A ghost of a touch on his cheek.

“Wake up.” The whisper graced his ear.

Armie’s eyes fluttered open. And he abruptly straightened up.

The Timothée model was standing before him, leaning back on a heel, violet robes draped loosely around his shoulders, tied neatly at the waist. A collarbone was barely visible in the triangle of flesh the robes failed to hide. Timothée was looking down at him, lacking the shyness of the more submissive Pleasurables. There was an underlying confidence to him, a strange quality considering yesterday’s outburst.

Armie’s eyes flickered down and up again. He sat up even more.

“Timothée,” he said.

The droid smiled. “Most people get it wrong the first time.”

Armie, unimpressed, didn’t smile back. “Well,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do.” He unbuttoned and unzipped his pants exposing black briefs. He reached between his legs and pulled out his penis where it lay atop the silk cloth, half-hard.

“Kneel,” Armie said, meeting Timothée’s gaze head-on, eye-to-eye. Timothée’s confidence appeared to have wavered, he was more subdued now. He glanced at Armie’s face, then to Armie’s cock, and back to Armie’s face again. Armie gazed back, steely, composed, a king relaxing in his throne, lazily waiting to be serviced. “Well? Do you know how to suck cock or not?”

Timothée grimaced and then his knees buckled as he settled between Armie’s legs, the purple robes curling around him like a puddle. Patience was waning. Armie wanted to just grab the boy by the hair and yank his face forward. _Make him learn_. But he willed himself to be still. Something visceral told him to hold on just a bit longer, to cling to the last remnants of patience even if he thought it would kill him. _I don’t think roughness is going to work with this one_. Not at first, anyway. This one was like a scared kitten and scared kittens didn’t perform well under pressure.

Timothée placed his hands on Armie’s inner thighs, pushing a little outward to spread Armie’s legs further. Another moment of hesitance and Timothée leaned in and took the very tip of Armie’s cock between his lips.

It was all Armie could do to keep from yelling in frustration, to keep from grabbing the Pleasurable and throat-fucking him. His fingers dug into the armchair, his knuckles white with self-restraint. Timothée was a picture, really, the way his cheeks sort of hollowed, the way his lips folded over the sensitive skin like he was sucking on a popsicle, the way his eyes never left Armie’s face.

It felt like an eternity but in actuality, no more than a few seconds could have passed when Armie yanked his cock away from Timothée’s lips and said, exasperated, “Are you even trained to please?”

To his surprise, Timothée looked offended and _annoyed_. Perhaps he wasn’t a scared kitten after all. He jumped to his feet, wrapped the robe more tightly around himself and said, rather rudely, too, “I’m trained to do whatever the Master insists I do.”

“Did you cop an attitude with previous Masters, too? Was that learnt behaviour or is it in your coding?”

Timothée didn’t answer.

Armie stared, frowning, a bit nonplussed. Had he wasted the skin on his arm to save a defunct product?

That couldn’t be right. Yesterday...yesterday, Timothée had… He’d sounded so different than other Mekka. Today was no different, only now he was petulant instead of soft. Since when did Mekka have such bouts of individualism?

“What’s your full name?”

“Why?”

Armie gave him another look, like _really_? “When I ask you a question, Timothée, you answer, without fail, without mistruth, without omission. Got it?”

Timothée hesitated before answering. “Timothée Hal Chalamet.”

“Chalamet.”

“That’s what I said.”

There was no Chalamet family for Mekka, Armie knew that much. Every droid shared the name of their maker, it was tradition, it was expected. Even the ones modelled after celebrities (CloneMekka) had their original names tied into their identity code, but would _answer_ to the name of the celebrity, of course.

“Come here.” When Timothée walked closer so that his shins were almost pressed against Armie’s chair, there was the added command of, “Disrobe.” The robe fell to the floor, like a wilted rose. Armie scooted towards the edge of the chair, so he could see Timothée’s figure up close. His thumbs caressed Timothée’s jutting hip bones, hands almost larger than an entire thigh. His crotch was about level with Armie’s face. Armie stared at it, brought his face near Timothée’s penis. The details were _amazing_. Veins in all the proper places, pores in the head, a silken urethral opening that looked real, that looked as though it was functional. The testicles were no less detailed, with bumps and asymmetry. The shading was accurate. Even though Timothée was fairly hairless, there were small, trimmed strands of hair at the base of his shaft. The skin on either side was also porous and looked no different than how Armie would expect an actual human to look. Armie looked up and saw that Timothée was observing him as _he_ observed _. The curiosity on this one…_

Armie pressed his lips to Timothée’s shaft, just softly, a closed-mouth kiss before moving upward. He was soft in all the right places, lean and wiry but not overtly muscled. His ribs were only slightly visible beneath the layer of skin. Burns and bruises from yesterday were still present, fading purples and blues. Cuts were clotted over. Scabbing around Timothée’s wrists and ankles made something inside Armie squirm. No unnatural healing then. There was no way this Mekka was built for pleasure, with so many imperfections. Armie stood up slowly, hating the fact that he hadn’t undressed, wanting, _wanting_ , to feel this Mekka’s manufactured flesh against his own. He kissed a nipple, marvelling at its colour palette, the attention that had been paid to seemingly every inch of Timothée’s body. Standing up all the way now, he let his lips graze over Timothée’s and received no response. The boy just stood there, not exactly stiff, but not a willing participant and somehow, that made it feel wrong. Eyes met and Armie couldn’t detect anything subhuman in those hazel (green? Flecked with brown? Flecked with gold?) irises and it was maddening, frustrating. It took out an element to it all - the element that made the droid nothing more than a toy, to be used and used, and used some more, and then discarded, like a condom, the element that separated them, that divided them into a hierarchy. Timothée’s gaze wasn’t blank.

It was defiant.

“You weren’t manufactured for pleasure, were you,” Armie said.

Timothée’s lips were pinched into a thin line but his jaw twitched.

“That was a question, Mekka,” Armie emphasised. It hadn’t been a question when he’d said it though.

“No,” Timothée said finally. “I was not manufactured for pleasure.”

“ _Can_ you please?”

A withering glance from a droid. How the fuck was there so much identity, so much sense of self, coded into a single being that he could muster up _that_ expression? “Yes. I can please.”

“Not very well.”

“In your opinion.”

“You were so keen on being saved yesterday. What was that? What’s this now? Do you have a death wish?”

Ah, there it was. A glimmer of fear. “The idea of death does not inherently bother me.” A lie.

Armie laughed. He couldn’t help it. A droid with contradiction codes, now _that_ was something! He moved around Timothée to get to the tiny kitchen by the front door. “Well, you coulda fooled me yesterday.”

“I _did_ fool you.”

Armie grabbed a cup from the cabinet. “Oh?” he called over his shoulder. “You weren’t afraid of being torched?”

No answer.

“You want something to drink? _Can_ you drink?”

“You should have received food packets in my box,” came a stoic reply.

“No, no, not talking about food. Talking about liquids. You said you aren’t manufactured for pleasure, so you aren’t going to be built to handle certain things like Pleasurables can. They can consume inordinate quantities of come, piss, and…” Armie made a general gesture that he knew Timothée couldn’t see. “But you said you can please. So, colour me perplexed.”

“I can consume liquids.”

“Do you piss? Shit?”

There was a pause as though the droid was actually considering his own indignation before answering. “Yes.”

“All right.” Armie left the kitchen with two cups in his hand. One was filled with pure gin, a bottle that he’d stolen from a former coworkers office when he first returned to this world, the other was mixed and watered down. He handed the mixed drink to Timothée who took it wordlessly. “Usually, when someone gives you something, you’re supposed to say thank you. Did no one code social etiquette into your programming?”

“If you had given me a bomb that was set to kill me, I would not thank you, even though you had given me something. I didn’t ask for this drink.”

Armie sat down on his futon; he was amused by this droid’s thought patterns. He patted a spot next to him. “Join me.”

Timothée took a begrudging sip of his drink and sat down on the futon beside his new Master.

“So, why did you beg to be saved?”

“That’s a personal question.”

“And I’m your new master. Your personhood belongs to me now.”

Timothée thought about it for a moment and Armie could see the way his emotions played across his face. His creator must have been the vulnerable sort to allow such humanity to reflect on his own invention. Normally, Armie would have been put off by the coldness and sheer disobedience. But Armie enjoyed Timothée’s individuality, his abrasiveness, his emotional vulnerability, the fact that he seemed to be fighting so many mental wars at once. “I don’t believe most people want to die,” he said. “There is a food shortage in this world and yet so many people fight each other for the scraps. That takes a will to live. Otherwise, why not just die?”

Armie shrugged. “That’s a fair assessment, I suppose. But why not take into account that humans are evolved to survive, even when they want to die?”

“What makes you think we haven’t evolved similarly?”

“You don’t evolve. You’re made in factories. Your coding isn’t complete. You aren’t a complex, three-dimensional human being.”

“That’s what you see. But it just shows how little you know.”

“Ahaha, all right, all right, I’ll step down for a moment here,” Armie said, amused. “Well, you are in my possession right now.” Timothée gave him a sardonic look and downed some more of the alcohol.

“Yes, yes, you’re the master and I’m your slave.”

Armie peered at him, noticing that he had two tiny freckles on his upper lip, right near the corner of his mouth. Armie wanted to lick them. “I see we started off on the wrong foot, okay? _You’re_ not happy to be here. _I’m_ worried I may have a rogue Mekka on my hands. Let’s start over, yeah?”

Timothée looked momentarily surprised and suspicious. “All right. I’m Timothée Chalamet.”

“Armie Hammer.”

“Like the actor?”

Armie was pleased that Timothée didn’t mention the corporate scandal.

“Yes, like the actor. You’re very beautiful, Timothée.”

Timothée actually laughed and it was the sweetest sound Armie had heard in a long, long time. “That---that’s the worst, dude. So cheesy, man.” Armie was surprised at the sudden drop in formality and easy lapse into colloquialism. “So, you…” Timothée surveyed his master’s face, searching for the answer before asking the question, “...you just… you just want me for pleasure?”

“...Yes. Is...that okay?”

Timothée shifted on the futon so that he was facing Armie completely. He placed both of his hands on either side of Armie’s face and leaned in so close, their lips were almost touching. “Me okay.” A pause. More of that thinking thing again. Armie wanted to rip those thoughts from Timothée’s head, wanted to have them in front of him, in his hand. “How are you going to treat me though...master?”

_I want to fuck you up against a wall every night. I want you to have your skinny ass in the air ready for me when I get off work. I want to fuck your throat any time I wish, whether you’re ready or not._

When Armie didn’t answer aloud, Timothée whispered, “ _I’m a real boy, Mr. Hammer_.

“You can call me Armie,” he said quietly, though he was thinking again of the incident yesterday, of Timothée’s tears, his anguish, the way his muscles looked like they were screaming in pain as he struggled against as those restraints.

“You can call me Timmy if that gets you going,” the Mekka said, a snarky edge to his voice.

“Mm...Tim… Can I kiss you?”

“Yes please.”

He took Timmy’s empty cup from him and placed their cups on a shelf beside the futon. Armie pressed a chaste kiss to Timothée’s lips. Something wet and curious touched his own lips and Armie allowed himself to be opened up. Tongue met tongue. Timothée’s hands were in Armie’s hair, yanking, pulling down. Armie had a hand on Timothée’s neck, but the other one was between Timothée’s legs.

“Lay down,” Armie said, pulling away. “I need to see all of you.” Timothée cast Armie a lofty look before laying back gracefully, arms out, legs open. His eyes never left Armie’s face, even when Armie stepped out of his pants and briefs, even when Armie drew his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side.

It was an obsession, bordering on mechanophobia. Before he had sex with any Mekka, Armie had to survey their bodies up close, examine all the perfections and imperfections, find the flaws that separated _them_ from _him_ , humans from machines. It was like he had to remind himself that this thing before him wasn’t a real person, wasn’t deserving of empathy, didn’t require compassion, wouldn’t really understand love. It was like he was reminding himself not to form an attachment, since the Mekka he could afford had such short lives.

He started with Timothée’s feet, long and narrow they were. Callous-free and soft. Armie traced a tendon up to the ankle joint. He lifted Timothée’s leg and kissed the top of his foot, kissed his ankle and the bruised redness that surrounded it, and up along the shin to the knee. He felt Timothée shudder beneath him and looked up. “Am I bothering you?”

“No,” came a soft reply. “Just...keep going.”

Armie kissed along a thigh, relishing the dip of muscle, the way it flexed beneath his touch. He gently pushed Timothée’s legs apart even more.

“Move,” came his order, but it lacked authority. “I want to see everything.” The Mekka adjusted his position, spread his legs as wide as he could, bent them at the knee. Armie found himself slowly getting onto his stomach on the futon, head between the Mekka’s legs. He saw that familiar ring of muscle, pink like the rest of the boy, and tight. He touched it lightly with a finger pad, enjoying each ridge and wrinkle. It had been way too long.

Way, way too long.

He replaced his finger with his lips, a kiss as innocent as the last one. He could feel Timothée struggling to breathe beneath him. Such a human reaction. It was unfair.

Kissed him harder. He didn’t smell like Pleasurables normally did, sickly sweet or ridiculously masculine. He smelled like sweat and boy and the faint hint of body wash and metal. He smelled like ash.

Murmured, “what do you want?”

Timothée lifted his head, pink splotches dotting his face. “You inside of me?”

“Is that what you want or what you think _I_ want?”

“It’s been a long time for me, too, you know.”

Armie smiled, gave the Mekka’s entrance a heavy lick, before getting back onto his hands and knees. “I didn’t realise Mekka had needs.”

“I’m a real boy,” Timothée said, in that same boyish voice as yesterday. As earlier. Armie groaned at how much it turned him on, set him on fire. He nuzzled the Mekka’s soft belly, kissing around the naval, useless, added for realism purposes and not much else, let his lips trace the indentations of Timothée’s ribs.

“You’re not a real boy,” he said, voice like a mother’s singing a lullaby to an infant. “You don’t have real memories. You don’t have determination instincts. You don’t have a soul.”

Timothée smiled. “I like the way you say things,” he said, coquettish. He laughed at something Armie couldn’t hear. “That’s supposed to be your line, but I couldn’t help myself.”

“I _do_ like the way you say things.” Armie took a nipple into his mouth and sucked hard. Beneath him, the Mekka squirmed. The nipple was left raw and hard in its perkiness, reddened. “But that thing you just did, that reaction you had, that wasn’t real, was it. It was learned behaviour. Practised behaviour. Trained.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“But it felt good.”

“Because you’ve been taught to think it feels good.”

Timothée did that laughing thing again. “Are you sure? Because I don’t think that’s true. Besides, you said I wasn’t trained for pleasure.”

Armie didn’t respond immediately. Just kissed along Timothée’s collarbones, up a vein in his neck, to his jaw. He lowered himself onto his side, facing the Mekka, his hand gliding slowly up and down Timothée’s bare chest. “You weren’t trained for pleasure. But you were trained.” Timothée turned on his side, his eyes large and piercing. “You have two freckles on your upper lip, did you know that?”

The barest twitch of a smile, a glint in the eye like he was remembering a fond memory. “Do you want to kiss them?”

“Yes.”

Armie licked Timothée’s upper lip before kissing him. Timothée responded and it didn’t feel like the trained kiss of a Pleasurable, but the faulty, sloppy kiss of a human being. Sometimes, it was too wet. Sometimes, there were teeth. Sometimes, nose bumps that almost hurt. And when it was deep, it was too deep, and Armie felt like he was being consumed, or consuming, or both. God, he had missed this so much.

“Timmy,” he said in a breath.

“Aaarmie…” was the equally light response. And then Timothée was on top of him. “Would you protect me?”

“From?”

“Anything.”

Armie caressed Timothée’s cheek. “Are you running from something?”

“Aren’t we all?”

That hit closer to home than Armie had expected. “You only have a short time left to live.”

“We all only have a short time left to live.” Timothée’s reply sent a chill sent a chill down Armie’s spine.

“That’s ominous.”

“It’s the truth.”

“That doesn’t make it less ominous.”

Timothée, eyes roving over Armie’s face, sat down, straddling Armie’s lower abdomen. Their cocks touched and the chill that had used Armie’s spine like a highway turned into an electric jolt that shot right back up his spine. “I feel safe with you,” Timothée said. “I can tell you’re a good person.”

Armie laughed bitterly. “That’s the worst judgment call I’ve heard in years.”

“Don’t give me up.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

Armie placed his hands on Timothée’s hips, letting the slide downwards to his thighs. “Yeah.”

“Say it then.”

“I promise.”

Timothée smiled. His erection was almost painful against Armie’s. “Before death, I want all of you inside me.”

Something rolled in Armie’s stomach, a curl of heat, stoked by the words said to plainly, so bluntly. It only got worse when Timothée’s fingers wrapped around Armie’s shaft and began to jerk him off. “I have an idea,” Timothée continued and with his free hand, he grabbed the two empty cups off the shelf. His fingers moved slowly at first and then more quickly, as Armie’s cock became slick with precome and it wasn’t long until Armie was coming, and coming, so hard, like he hadn’t had such an orgasm in forever, and Timothée caught the ropes of the thick, white liquid in one of the cups. And in moments, though things seemed to move in slow motion, Timothée was jerking himself off, too, and into the second cup, which he handed to Armie.

Hesitant, Armie took the cup and Timothée scooted off of him so he could sit up. “What’s this for?”

“All of me. And all of you. And all of our possible futures.”

Armie peered into the cup, eyeing the white substance. He wasn’t sure he understood. Or maybe he did, really, deep down, but everything inside him rebelled against such an act. But then he saw Timothée place his cup to his lips and throw his head back. Saw him swallow, swallow some more. It was one of the most beautiful things Armie had ever seen. Then Armie was drinking, too, and he felt the Mekka’s gaze on him as he did. The taste was nothing unusual, a bit salty, a tad uncomfortably thick, definitely unlike the candy-like ejaculate from the average Pleasurable. It spilled into his mouth and slid down his throat and Armie found that he loved it. He wanted more.

When he lowered the cup, and met Timothée’s expressionistic gaze, a gaze that was simultaneously so revealing, yet so unreadable, he said, “What was that?”

“A promise,” Timothée said. “To protect each other. Our pleasure is now one. Just like our survival. We feed each other, quench each other’s thirsts. We serve each other. And we protect each other.” He grinned. “See, I can talk like you, too, if I want.”

Armie rolled his eyes. And glanced down at his cup. Reached a finger in to scrape remaining come off the walls and put the finger to his mouth. “All right. I don’t think I understand, but… all right.” He sucked his finger clean.

Timothée watched every movement. “You understand more than you think,” he said. He took the cup from Armie and got up. Deposited the cups in the sink in the kitchen. Came back out and stood there, tall, and svelte, and boyish. Armie beckoned him over and he came and they curled up in bed. “No work today?”

“No work today,” Armie said, running a finger down Timothée’s spine. “Just an entire day to get to know each other.”

“Is this common for you?”

“It’s how I do things, yes. Though it usually takes less time.”

“Because I’m not like the others.”

“Because you’re not like the others.”

Timothée smiled. “Good. I like that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was actually heading into the 10k words range with still so much to discuss, so i decided to chop it up a bit.  
> timothee, of course, isn't your usual droid  
> did you know lucasfilms has trademarked the word 'droid,' so like... you have to get permission to use the word or get sued? like there was a phone model called the droid and it was licensed under lucasfilms. that's ridiculous, man. so i feel a little bit of pleasure whenever i use the word in this fic... though the more i use the word, the more i'm starting to think that 'droid' is kind of a derogatory name for mekka.  
> i also have armie's room drawn out, layout-wise, if anyone needs help with that, idk.  
> the biggest issue for me in this chapter was me trying to decide whether or not to capitalise the words 'mekka' and 'master.' mekka is an overarching brand name... but also now a common name for droids with skin. and i have 12 classes of mekka sketched out, with their subclasses, but idk  
> i may have to fix minute world building details in past chapters as i write this but nothing that should interfere with the story  
> also, i'm going to keep this story linear, no flashbacks, etc, otherwise it's going to end up as long as bac is going to be and i don't have that kind of energy as much as i love sci fi hahaha
> 
> any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments or find me on tumblr :-) <3 you all <3


	4. second confluence.

 

When Armie woke, he was alone and a jolt ran through him. Everything had been a dream after all. He half-expected to have been arrested. Ever since Ronan’s threat, a creeping feeling of paranoia had sat in the pit of his stomach.

No. Stop it.

He saw Timothée sitting at his sorry excuse for a desk, wearing the metal fingerpads he needed for navigation. The desk was small, just large enough for the terminal and a place to jot down notes. It consisted of a single drawer, which had grown into a multi-purpose storage place for Armie. Timothée was on the computer, reading up on things Armie couldn’t see from the futon. With a groan, Armie swung his legs over onto the floor. Behind him, plastered on the window, a clock told him it was 1608. He hadn’t meant to sleep for so long.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he said.

“I tried,” Timothée said, frowning at something he was reading. He was still naked. He was still beautiful. Armie ached at the sight of him and recalled the events of the morning, the exploration, the conversation, the drinking. His stomach did a _zing!_ at the memories, like he couldn’t believe something like that had happened. He got up and walked over Timothée and nudged him to his feet. Armie moved the chair and positioned himself behind him. This felt a little more normal, a little less intense. This was routine. Timothée just continued to lean forward on the desk, zipping through news articles and historical documents.

“What are you reading?” Armie asked as he lubed up, as he slowly pushed a finger into Timothée, who winced accordingly.

“Just current events,” he said, voice strained. “I--I’d missed a lot the past year. I hadn’t had access to the news and I like keeping on top of--oh, that feels good-- things. Oh, _fuck_.” Armie had inserted another finger as Timothée tried, in vain, to read an article about the Chinese Civil War.

“A year, huh? That’s a third of your lifespan,” Armie said.

Timothée shrugged.

“Is this okay?” Armie asked, pushing the head of his penis at the Mekka’s entrance.

“Kind of a bit late to ask, don’t you think?” Timothée countered, but he was pushing back onto Armie’s hand. “But don’t worry. You’re not raping me.”

Armie rolled his eyes. “You can’t rape a--” Timothée looked back at him sharply. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“ _God_ , you’re fucking huge,” the droid said. “I know that--oh, fuck--I know that sounds like something I’m s-supposed to say--” he was panting with the effort of keeping himself loose, “--but you’re actually _big_. How big are you?”

“Around nine or so when hard.”

Timothée forced out a whistle. “ _Damn_. Oww--okay--okay, I’m okay--that’s gonna be a trip to deepthroat, you know that, right--ahhh--yeah, okay, there we go--that feels--that feels better--”

“You talk a lot.”

“Yeah, I know. Does it bother you?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” Timothée’s knuckles were white on the edges of the desk. “I’m--I’m thirsty, okay?”

Armie got the message. “So’m I,” he agreed. Timothée nodded and Armie began to thrust. “I take it this isn’t your first time.”

“Not exactly--oh, fuck, yes--yes, keep going, there--harder--” Timothée’s metal fingerpads were slipping on the desk as he struggled to find a better hold. Armie’s balls slapped loudly against Timothée’s and Armie relished in it, relished in how tight Timothée was around him, how deep he was inside of him, the soft cries and moans being made by the Mekka himself.

“Deeper--” Timothée begged.

“I’m in all the way,” Armie said, pushing hard against Timothée’s ass as a reminder. His hand gripped Timothée’s hair at the root.

“I don’t care, go deeper.”

Armie did a half-laugh sort of thing. “Timmy, that’s not how that works--”

“Ha, you called me--oh, fuck, _fuck_ \--you--you called me Timmy again. Finally--”

Timothée was so warm around his cock, so tight. Armie had forgotten what it had felt like. Timothée felt so natural around him, so _human_ , so _real_ that Armie was losing himself in that fantasy as easily as a weary man falls to sleep. He didn’t want to wake up from this.

“Tim, I’m about to--”

“Okay, good, because--the Chinese are building a warhead--”

“We’re gonna talk about that _now_?” He thrust in again, harder, feeling his muscles tense. Timothée let out a wordless plea.

“Gotta stay--come on, come--up to--date--”

Armie pulled out and Timothée whirled around and knelt. He slipped off the metal fingerpads, setting them on the floor on either side of him. His face with glistening with sweat and his hair was matted from Armie pulling at it. Timothée’s mouth was open and that red tongue was out, ready to catch everything. Armie placed the head of his cock on Timothée’s tongue just as he came. Impatiently, Timothée wrapped his lips around the glistening head and took it deeper into his throat. One hand was between his own legs, jerking himself, and the other was on Armie’s hip.

“Beautiful boy,” Armie said, running a hand through Timothée’s curls. “God, you’re so beautiful. So wonderful. So amazing.” _How did I get so lucky_? Was he no longer alone? He revelled in the way his come coated Timothée’s tongue when he gasped, the way Timothée sat back on his heels and swallowed, a thoughtful expression on his face. He revelled in this strange mutuality they’d decided upon, something oddly friendly yet intimate and egalitarian. With Pleasurables, one always established dominance, even when one was playing a submissive. Droids were never to be treated like they were better than humans because how could they be? They lacked the complexity. They lacked souls… not that Armie thought that he had one, himself.

But here... _here_ , Timothée, with his inconsistencies, his disobedience, his utterly strange sense of self that seemed too blatantly defiant, like every nerve in his being shouted “Look at me! I am here! I exist! I am no less real than any of you!” rattled Armie’s brain. It was a fantasy but not a fantasy. _Ergo, cogito sum_.

Armie lowered himself to his knees as Timothée, trembling, struggled to stand. His tiny body was tight with the oncoming orgasm. Armie gripped the Mekka’s hips and swallowed his penis easily, letting it slide into his throat and when Timothée came, Armie, breathing heavily through his nose, swallowed that, too. He stood back up, helped Timothée to his feet, which also struck Armie as unusual as Mekka weren’t usually advanced enough to even _pretend_ to be that affected by an orgasm, but Timothée was literally shaking, and sweating, and trying to regain control of his breathing. It was unnerving how real everything felt.

Timothée managed to scoop up the metal fingerpads on the floor and he set them on the desk before grabbing Armie’s hand and allowing himself to be led back over to the futon. The two of them collapsed on the mattress.

Armie surveyed Timothée’s face and found the Mekka staring back at him with equal intensity.

“How did you know I wasn’t a Pleasurable?” Timothée asked.

Armie smiled. “Because you’re terrible at seduction. Pleasurables know how to seduce right from their unboxing, man. You hesitated too much. And I could tell you didn’t want to give me head. You weren’t enthusiastic about any of it.” He ran a hand down the curve of Timothée’s waist. “So, since you’re not a Pleasurable… what _is_ your make then?”

“Don’t really have one.”

“That can’t be right though. All Mekka have roles.”

Timothée shrugged, reaching a hand out to touch the hair on Armie’s chest, kneading it with his fingers. “I don’t. I wasn’t made in a factory either.”

Armie felt the bite from his earlier comment about Mekka evolution. “No, I guess you weren’t. Do you remember where you were made?”

Timothée scowled. “Of course I do. I remember everything.”

“Even your childhood?”

“You know Mekka don’t have childhoods. And none of those memories are real. I never had a childhood. And no one planted false memories of childhood either.”

“Really? That’s unusual. How long have you been...alive?” ‘Alive’ wasn’t the term Armie normally used, but at this point, he didn’t know how else to refer to Timothée. Everything else seemed… insubstantial.

Timothée was quiet for a moment. He appeared to be working through his answer. “You haven’t forgotten to protect me, right?”

“To protect you. Feed you. Quench your thirst, yeah. A promise is a promise.”

More silence. More thinking.

“All right,” he said finally. The Mekka looked steadily at Armie, moved his hand from his chest to Armie’s mouth, stroked his lips. Armie took the finger into his mouth and suckled gently. “I was made twelve years ago.”

Armie’s eyes went wide and he took Timothée’s finger out of his mouth. “ _What_? Twelve years? Mekka don’t live past three! Twelve? _Twelve_? Are you sure? Are you sure your life before… that’s all real and not im--”

“Yes,” Timothée answered angrily. “Everything’s real, Armie. _Everything_. As real as the fact that we’re entering another war and this one is going to destroy us.”

Armie sighed. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“I hate it when you condescend to me.”

“I’m sorry. Twelve years though… that’s unheard of. It’s… it’s against protocol. It goes against everything we’ve done to protect ourselves…”

Timothée scoffed. “Protect yourselves. From what? Us? For wanting to be treated better? We’re the least of your concerns when you have enemies at every border and a dying planet.”

“How do you know so much?”

“I listen and I pay attention.”

Armie dragged Timothée on top of him. Timothée kissed his chest before resting his chin on his hands and gazing at Armie’s face. “What else do you know?”

“That I like you. That I think you’re more like me than you think you are, that you’re more like me than you are like _them_.”

Armie didn’t have to ask what Timothée meant by that. He felt it to be true, a core truth that he’d known the moment he decided to save Timothée’s life. He could rage against it all he wanted, but loneliness was a bitch and aside from Liz, Timothée was the first thing Armie had felt a connection to in over a decade. _This is what you wished for when you bought Death. You wanted to be left alone. You were unprepared for what that came to mean._  The Mekka kissed him briefly. Armie patted his ass and slid his fingers downward until he felt Timothée’s entrance against a fingertip. He circled the hole and Timothée sighed. “You like touching me, don’t you.”

“I’m addicted to it.” He was. He just wanted to touch, to explore, to _feel_. There was this insatiable need to...to be _inside_ someone, to be a part of someone, to be as close as possible.

“I kinda like that.”

“I want to kiss every inch of your skin.” He wanted to do more than that, but what _was_ more than that? Armie didn’t have the words for the level of intimacy he was trying to subscribe to. It probably wasn’t even possible but he was going to damn well try.

Timothée looked at him seriously. “Do you promise?”

“What?”

“Do you promise to do that before… before…? Do you promise to kiss every inch of me?” God, when Timothée used _that voice_ and spoke so blatantly, it sent snakes of heat straight to his groin.

“You demand a lot of promises.”

“Because they’re real. They’re… genuine and serious. I want you to know that I am serious. Do you promise?”

There was a tightening in his chest, the kind of suffocating tightness that comes when one’s heart metaphorically expands to encompass the burgeoning affection or love one feels for someone else. Armie stroked the side of Timothée’s face, fingers roving over a sharp cheekbone. “I promise to kiss every inch of you. I vow to explore your entire body with my mouth.”

“With your tongue?”

“With my tongue, too.” Yes, tasting every bit would add to that intimacy that Armie craved. Maybe the Mekka would even return the favour. He’d had a hard time imagining those Pleasurables being very effective. He hadn’t been able to imagine them pleasing _him_ outside of a traditionally regular blowjob and a mediocre fuck. He hadn’t been able to imagine them fingering him, forcing _his_ mouth open to swallow whatever _they_ had to give. He hadn’t been able to imagine squatting over their faces, feeling their lips moving rhythmically against his skin. But Timothée, in all of his openness and rebelliousness…his coding so obviously more than binary... Armie could imagine so much between them. This thought made Armie’s skin burn and so,  conflicted, he added, “You’re very sexual for a non-Pleasurable.”

Timothée kissed him again and muttered something soft, something that sounded like “not much time left,” but Armie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “Put a finger inside me, please…?”

Armie did as told and swallowed Timothée’s gasp with a kiss. “What else do you know?”

“Aside from the fact that I really like this…” the Mekka mused. “I know… barometry…”

“Barometry.” Random, but okay.

“Haha, yes… seismology... “

“Earthquakes?”

Timothée nodded. “That’s part of it, yeah. I know climatology and marine biology… and theoretical mathematics...I know kino and music...Old music…”

“Twelve years doesn’t make music old,” Armie said, a tad haughtily but Timothée just smiled at that and continued.

“I know languages.”

“More than just...Chendry and all of its dialects?”

“More than just Chendry and all of its dialects. More than just Arabic and Chinese and Europan.”

Armie added another finger and Timothée shifted. “What do you know? Talk to me.”

The Mekka thought for a moment. “Okay. _Non mea manu mihi caro rursum data est. Huc ab hominibus qui mihi tributum pendere volunt vocatus sum_.”

“Latin? No one speaks that anymore, I thought.”

Timothée nodded. “It was not by my hand that I am once again given flesh. I was called here by humans who wish to pay me tribute.”

“Ahahaha. That sounds godly. Do another?”

Timothée smirked. He thought again, came to a decision. “ _I zoi tis gatas einai to idio diskoli kai epikidini_.”

“Mm… that sounded hot.” Armie added a little thrust to his fingers, which made Timothée gasp. “What was it?”

“It’s Greek. ‘The life of a cat is both difficult and dangerous.’”

“A cat, huh? We don’t have those anymore. I’ve never even seen one.”

“I saw one once years ago.”

“That’s impossible. Animals are illegal.”

Timothée shrugged. “I’m aware of that. But I’m not lying. I saw it during one of my trips into… well, it was during an errand for a previous master. Four legs, furry, big pointed ears? It had its tail in the air. I think it was happy. I _hope_ it was happy…”

Armie was a little jealous now, too. And perplexed. And overwhelmed. A _cat_. This droid was telling him he’d seen an actual _cat_. Most animal species had gone extinct and those that remained were banned from all major cities. Something about diseases and the cost of vaccinations. A _cat_ in Leetia. It was unheard of. “What else you got for me?”

“ _Lu bant yàgg-yàgg ci ndox, du tax mu soppaliku mukk jasig_.”

“Yeah. No idea.”

“Wolof.”

“Never heard of it.”

When he spoke, Timothée sounded sad. “You wouldn’t. No one speaks it anymore. It’s from a country that no longer exists. No matter how long a log soaks, it will not become a crocodile.”

“All these animal idioms,” Armie mused. “Let me guess...you’ve seen a crocodile, too?”

“No. I’ve never seen a crocodile. I know what they look like though.”

“I’m sensing bullshit.”

Timothée sighed. In spite of the fingers resting inside of him, in spite of their earlier pleasure, he seemed heavy with something Armie was ignorant about, like a weight rested on his shoulders and couldn’t be removed.

“ _Im dååhkasjehth dov skaamojde_. I don’t tolerate your bullshit,” he said. “Sami. Northern dialect. Also no longer spoken since...the Olkiluoto incident…” It was said that nuclear radiation was still leaking out of the reactor, even centuries later. Most of the land around the reactor had been deserted but there were rumours of unusual sighting, deformed creatures and flesh-hungry humans. Armie was reminded of the creatures in the Fog, whatever they were. “Anyway…I thought of another one. _Hrvati svojataju kravatu, penkalu i Nikolu Teslu, ali Srbi se s time baš ne bi složili_ …”

“What’s that? That’s also really pretty.”

Timothée grinned. “I’ll tell you if you put another finger in me.”

“That’s going to hurt.”

“So did your dick, but I’m not complaining.”

It took a moment of struggle, but Armie managed to push another finger inside Timothée, who writhed in discomfort before settling back down on Armie’s chest. “Oh, that’s a weird feeling,” he said. “But I like it. Can you… can you move them inside of me? I want to feel that…”

“You’re a dirty boy,” Armie said, smiling. He loved how hot Timothée felt around him. He remembered doing such things to various men and women and otherwise when he was younger, when he’d had any human he’d wanted at his disposal. He remembered the ropes and the stickiness and the sweat…  

“Yeah, I am. I don’t mind being this way for you. I know you’re a good person.”

“That’s also bullshit” but Timothée didn’t argue. Armie wondered if Timothée said such things to convince himself or if he actually believed them. He’d never call himself a good person, not in a million years. He’d made a lot of mistakes. Following in his father’s footsteps had been one in a long line of _many_. He’d used people, for connections, for money, for sex. Armie could hear her laughter. Feel the heat of the bomb blasts. Fingers slick with blood--

He thrust his fingers inside Timothée a little more roughly than he’d intended.

“I...oh... _oh_...that’s nice, there...yes, there! Oh, thank you so much, man, that’s… yeah…” Timothée  exhaled blissfully. Armie hated himself. “I’d said...I’d said ‘the Croatians think they invented the tie and the mechanical pencil and Nikola Tesla but the Serbians weren’t having it.”

Armie thought about that one as he slowly pumped his fingers in and out of Timothée who let out quiet whimpers, mewls even, that Armie wished he could turn into art and frame. “I don’t think I understand that one. Who are Croatians? Serbians? What’s a mechanical pencil?”

Timothée laughed lowly amidst his whimpers. “I didn’t think drivers were supposed to be _that_ ignorant.”

“Hey, I had a _very_ good education. You just know too much.”

“I had a very good teacher,” Timothée admitted. “Back when Europa wasn’t Europa and it was divided into factions -- sorry, countries -- there were people called Croatians...and Serbians… and Poles… and Italians…”

“This sounds like fiction.”

“Yeah, I guess a lot of things sound that way when much of human history has been erased.”

Armie slowly withdrew his fingers and massaged Timothée’s ass instead. That old paranoia seeped through him again. Ronan’s threat hung in the air. “ _That_ sounds like a very dangerous thing to say.”

“But Nikola Tesla would say that it’s very important that I say it.”

“He must’ve been a brave man.” Armie wanted to ask who he was, but it was like he was walking on the edge of a knife. _What makes you think I’m afraid of dying again?_

Timothée was quiet again. Armie wished, yet again, that he could pick Timothée’s brain. The droid knew how to lie. The droid had no make, no role. He claimed to have seen a cat. And to know languages the world at large had forgotten. There was no way that Timothée Chalamet’s existence was legal. A thrill went through him at the mere thought. But he also knew he couldn’t afford another Death. _A promise is a promise_. Conflicting desires warred inside him. He stroked Timothée’s lower back. He had so many questions…

“I want to meet your maker,” he said.

Timothée raised his head. “Why?”

“Because… you’re _you_.”

Timothée sighed. “We won’t find him. I think he’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve tried looking for him myself.”

“Why?”

Timothée smiled. “Because I’m me.” He disappeared into his head again, his face shadowed. It had been less than a day since Armie had rescued him from the inferno and already, it was like they’d known each other for an entire lifetime, for more than a lifetime, for centuries. “Armie?” Timothée said.

“Mm?”

“I can show you the cat.”

Now _that_ was unexpected. “I’m sure it’s long gone by now,” he said. “Probably dead. Killed by the cleric.”

Timothée got up and stretched and Armie watched, mesmerised by the way the skin pulled over bone, the way muscles flexed, the way Timothée’s face scrunched up into a bunch of wrinkles and when he unravelled again, he looked as beautiful and as immaculate as ever. He rubbed his nose and popped his jaw.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “But even if so, I’d like to look. Are you up for it?”

Armie glanced around his flat as though looking for someone to answer for him. Did he really feel like chasing a memory on his day off? And what a memory it was… If the cat turned out to be real, and still alive, Armie could be arrested for breaching protocol and breaking the law. He wondered if Ronan had known what Timothée was when she obtained him. Did she investigate when she obtained product or did she turn a blind eye? It was probably better to turn a blind eye than risk having one’s memory erased. And just yesterday, he’d been willing to die to protect a droid who knew how to talk its way out of life or death situation. What changed today _really_? Armie shrugged. “I guess… how far is it?”

“Not far. Sector 8. My visa’s in the box. We should leave today. Now even.”

“Why the rush?” Armie asked, even as he slipped into pants, and a vest and a long overcoat. Timothée, dragging his box into the room, was rifling through its contents until he produced a translucent, plastic sheet. He draped it over himself and turned. As he did, the sheet melded into holographic clothing made for a Pleasurable. He flipped through a couple of outfits before he stopped on one: skin-tight, black pants that rode low on his hips, the strings of a thong seen hanging onto his hips, a midriff shirt with sparkly Chendry symbols flashing on the front. His feet were latched into deathtrap stilettos.

“Time is not on our side,” Timothée said, as he looked down at himself. “And neither are these clothes but this covers the most amount of skin.”

“I like it when you show skin,” Armie said.

Timothée gave him an abrasive stare. With those heels, he was as tall as Armie. “I’ll gladly show skin for you and you only. But this... _this_ isn’t going to protect me if things go wrong.”

“What could go wrong?” _I’ve died six times_.

“Everything.”

He stooped down again to grab some packets of food. “What’s a good quiet place we can go to to get you food? A place where no one will look at us twice?”

“Trattoria Via Vai is a place I go to often,” Armie said. _What makes you think I’m afraid to die again?_ “You can wear one of my jackets. It’ll be loose around the shoulders and a bit too long in the arms but it’ll cover you. We can’t be out too long, okay? I have work tomorrow.”

Timothée walked up to him, the heels making believable _clacking_ sounds on the floor. He put a hand between Armie’s legs and looked straight into his eyes. “We shouldn’t be gone too long,” he said and Armie grunted when Timothée’s fingers tightened slightly. They kissed, softly at first, and then again, harder. Armie didn’t want to stop and when Timothée pulled away, his lips wet and shining, he almost yanked him back, almost said, fuck it, cancel all the plans, we need to stay in tonight and continue where we left off.

“Why are you so good at this?” Armie whispered, kissing Timothée’s nose and cheek and eyebrow.

“Because I, too, have been starved of human affection for a very long time,” Timothée said.

 _And time is running out_.

He didn’t have to say it. Armie heard it all the same. They’d met too late.

Armie grabbed Liz’s shell and jewel and stuffed them into a jacket pocket. He didn’t want her to come home to an empty flat. He placed an extra coat of his on Timothée’s narrow shoulders, sighing mentally at the fact that he’d no longer be able to glimpse the Mekka’s bare skin so easily.

As he was locking up, Armie stared into his flat. He had a strange feeling that it was going to be the last time he ever saw it.

A little melancholy, he took Timothée’s hand and, like lovers, they headed down the hall towards the automotive port.

The sun was setting, not that it could be seen from beneath the heavy cloud cover, but the city was gradually growing darker. It was going to be a long, _long_ night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to  
> deka: for the greek  
> interre: for the latin  
> taj: for the croatian  
> cheena: for the wolof  
> sel: for the sami
> 
> as for them speaking in slang and using the word/name 'god,' all of that is technically just translated into English. They aren't actually using such slang since they aren't actually speaking in English, but I didn't want to confuse anyone by using weird Chendry/English translations. If that, uh, makes sense
> 
> now onto the next chapter...time for some action and some answers :-)


	5. threshold.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a cat!

see, m’dear, your existence is an act of rebellion so shine, shine, shine, burn so bright, the darkness shrinks in fear

\- unknown

 

“We should have gone to _Speranza_ ,” Armie said, after taking a couple of bites of his food. “I forgot that food here can kind of be a hit or miss.”

Timothée shrugged as he peeled away the seal on his own package of food. “I don’t see why it matters. It’s technically all the same stuff.” He looked up and stared accusingly at the sign behind the counter that read “Licensed by Synthetikorp” in Chendry symbols. All American food had to be assessed and processed through Synthetikorp. Blight, Mosaik, and mass bee extinction of the 22nd century had purged Europa and South America of all its grain and produce and so Synthetikorp, a food and energy conglomerate owned by the American and East Asian Empires, had to take the necessary precautions in importing and manufacturing food to prevent further spreads in the homeland.

Not that it wholly mattered. Real food could only be purchased by the super wealthy. Everything else was low-grade synthetic mess, the staple of the poor. Rice. Or a rice mix. Or liquid rice. Restaurants tried to sell various combinations of rice mix in forms that seemed more palatable or fancy, but it was all the same shit. An apple pie just wasn’t really an apple pie and that was something one had to accept. Not that most people alive even knew what a genuine apple pie tasted like anyway.

Keenly aware that they weren’t alone and so all words had be said with care, Armie and Timothée ate the rest of their meal in silence. After, Armie tossed Timothée a small rinse ball that he stared at for a second, sighed, and placed in his mouth. Armie took one, too and they sat for a spell, feeling the rinse ball clean the bacteria out of their teeth and left their breath cool and minty.

When they got back into the car, strapping in, Timothée reached up to the overhead compartment and yanked the sensory board down off the roof.

“What the hell?” Armie demanded at the wires that cascaded down onto the middle console. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“So we could speak without being overheard,” Timothée responded, lowering the window and tossing the sensory board out. He didn’t bother to watch it fall through the Fog. “You know, for someone who makes a shit living, you’re really bad at being poor.”

Armie was still staring at the mess of wires between them. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that how you figured out I’m not a Pleasurable is exactly how I’m able to figure out that you weren’t always living like this. You used to be rather wealthy, didn’t you? What happened?”

 _Not again_. _First Ronan_ …

“That’s none of your damn business.”

Timothée shrugged. “We vowed to protect each other. You can tell me things. But whatever. Just fly.”

Armie flew. They phased through massive corporate holograms, some of the ads calling them both out by name as they passed. Other cars zipped by, but the further away from his Sector he flew, the less crowded the airstreams became. They were heading towards an actual ghetto and Armie was grateful that he was still armed with Ronan’s gun.

“I want to know...what you think you know,” Armie said, with unhabitual caution. Timothée reached over and put a hand on his thigh and Armie felt the warmth from his touch spread. He cursed himself silently, hating how a Mekka could have such an easy effect on him.

“You do poverty like I do seduction,” Timothée said. “A part of you still clings to whatever wealth you had. You have rinse balls, you don’t count credits as meticulously as you should, you walk and talk with the confidence of a very educated man, from a very prestigious background. You’ve been poor a while, but not enough to forget. I saw that painting on your wall, the Ramsey. That, alone, would have cost over a million credits. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t steal it or you wouldn’t be here.”

“A million credits,” Armie repeated, laughing. “That’s shooting a bit high, but I’m flattered.”

Timothée shrugged, moved his hand up Armie’s thigh. “So you got it as a discounted rate. Did you know Ramsey personally? Were you a colleague?”

Armie swallowed hard, a mixture of anguish from the memories, and the effect Timothée’s hand was having on him. He wanted to laugh. Or weep. Or both. “He was a friend,” he finally said, managing to keep most of the emotion out of his voice.

“A lover?”

Armie made a disgusted noise. “No, _no_ , a _friend_. He was married.”

“Married,” Timothée said. “Another benefit of the rich. What happened?”

“I fucked up, that’s what happened,” Armie said quietly. “Change the topic now or we head back.”  _I am born of violence._  

“Okay.” Timothée was undoing the buttons on Armie’s pants. “I’m sorry.” His fingers were beneath the fabric, rubbing against Armie’s penis. Armie felt the very tips of manicured fingernails touch his shaft, a tickle more than anything else. He could see, out of his peripheral vision, Timothée shifting in his seat, undoing the straps that held him in place, getting on his knees. Armie’s hands tensed just above the directional pad. His cock was brought out of his pants. A tongue found his slit. And he groaned, trying not to lose sight of the airstream but being unable to keep still. Lips enveloped his head and it was sucked into a tight, warm mouth.

“You’re...you’re better at this than any--any Pleasurable,” Armie said, struggling to keep his breathing even. He took one hand away from the directional pad and placed it on Timothée’s head, fingers in those curls, knuckles white.

Timothée lifted his head just slightly to say, “I can’t deepthroat you yet. But later, we can try other positions.”

Armie let out a frustrated grunt. “ _God_ , how do you talk about such things so...so…”

“Factually?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Time is too short to play coy. Besides, I get more nutrition from you than I do my own food packets, did you know that?”

“Oh my _God,_ Timmy.” _You ridiculous, crazy boy, so beautiful and strange…_

“I know, right? It’s tragic.”

Armie laughed out loud. “That’s not what I mean but sure, sure, whatever. Whatever makes you happy.” He peered down at Timothée’s head, let his own hand travel along Timothée’s spine. “ _Does_ this make you happy? Do Mekka feel genuine happiness?”

Timothée licked around Armie’s head. “I can’t speak for other Mekka but for me, yes, I think this is the closest I’ve been to happiness in a long time.” His tongue curled around the underside of Armie’s head and his fingers moved up and down Armie’s shaft.

Armie parked beside a building just so he could place both hands in Timothée’s hair, force down his head, encourage him to take more and more. He thrust upwards a little, trying to get closer, to be as _inside_ Timothée as possible. And when he came, with a very unattractive grunt and a soft _yes_ , Timothée swallowed hungrily, as usual, slurping him down like he was starving.

Timothée lifted his head, licked his very red, very shiny lips and exhaled. “Thanks,” he said. Armie, tidying himself up, just shot Timothée a half-exasperated, half-amused look.

“Uh… thank _you_ …” he said. A little unnerved, he turned back to the directional pad and started flying again. They hit the border of Sectors 6 and 7. Armie flashed their visas and waited with baited breath for them to be allowed through. This part always scared him. Falsifying records was a death sentence.

But Magik and his Jester came through and Armie and Timothée made their way into Sector 7, which was drastically more impoverished. Half the sector couldn’t afford power. The smell of sewage wafted up from the Fog. Armie rarely worked in this sector, avoided it whenever he could. The sun had set fully now.

“Don’t look down upon them,” Timothée said. “It’s not their fault.”

Armie gazed at him. “I...I wasn’t.”

Timothée didn’t respond. His face was stone. Whatever joy he had been feeling before seemed to have evaporated with the change in environment.

“Burning bridges, tying ropes, sailin’ on a sinkin’ boat,” he said, a little melody to his voice. “Pyre piles of lost hope… and letters that I never wrote…”

“That was nice. What was it?”

Timothée shrugged. “No idea. Heard it somewhere, I think. Seemed fitting.”

Armie wasn’t sure what it meant, but he agreed nonetheless. Timothée’s whole demeanor had changed. He was tense, attentive. That sadness, that heaviness had returned. It made him look older.

They floated through Sector 7.

“Do you have a FoFiShi for this thing?” Timothée asked.

“Yeah.”

“Throw it up.”

“Now?”

Timothée nodded. “Now.”

Armie’s fingers danced in the air above the directional pad. He raised a hand to thumb some buttons above the windshield. A _zzzz_ sound washed over them and their vehicle and for a second, everything outside was pixelated and blurry and then it cleared. “It’s not a very strong one,” Armie said. “It’s very low-grade. Just to protect from muggers and fender benders. This won’t protect us against an onslaught.”

“That’s okay.”

“This is going to drain our power faster.”

“That’s also okay.”

Armie sighed. “Timmy, if we have to pull over in one of these Sectors to recharge--”

“I’ll protect you like I promised.” Timothée turned one of his smiles on Armie who didn’t smile back.

“Right.” He doubted Timothée’s abilities. “So, I’m assuming Sector 8 is worse than this?”

Timothée nodded. “Much worse. We will have to be very careful because it won’t just be the Shadows against us.”

When they reached the visa tolls, both Armie and Timothée warranted very scrutinising stares. Armie had thrown out any remaining dangling wires from the upper console.

“Business or pleasure?” the inspectormekka asked. 

“Pleasure,” Timothée said, a heavy Leetian accent leaking through, before Armie could respond. He met the inspector’s gaze with the most salacious of smiles. Their vehicle passed inspection, Armie, trying not to show his relief, paid the fare, and they were through.

It was very quiet.

It was like someone had turned off all noise. It was like someone had ruined their eardrums. It was like they were inside a vacuum.

They drifted into the darkness.

It was very quiet.

There were no lights. Shadows moved within shadows. There was no other traffic.

It was very quiet.

When Armie spoke, it was barely above a whisper, “This is where you lived? _Grew up_?”

Timothée nodded. His expression was unreadable. “Yes, this is home. We call it Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Odd name.”

“Yeah.”

Silence befell them again. Armie reached for Timothée’s hand. Timothée brought Armie’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it before letting it drop back in between them. In their headlights, skeletons of skyscrapers could be made out. _Where were all the people_?

“During the Mosaik crisis in the 80's, most of Sector 8 was wiped out,” Timothée said softly. “Those crops that Synthetikorp imported in a shit attempt to encourage synthetic farming…they came with Mosaik. And with those wages, they couldn’t hire proper farmers. Occidental Petroleum funded the production of Mekka workers, though they tried to keep that under wraps, from what I understand...” At this, Armie stiffened but Timothée didn’t seem to notice. “Anyway, Mosaik destroyed all of the food for the lower sectors. And the Mekka workers were destroyed. And all the human farmers who’d been contracted into jobs were also silenced and, uh, so it goes.”

“How do you know all of this?” Armie asked hoping his voice didn’t betray him. He felt ice in his bones.

“I read the contracts,” Timothée said. “I wanted to know why my maker and I were living in such squalor when my maker had one of the most beautiful minds I’d ever seen.”

“Of course he would,” Armie said, relieved to move away from the topic of Occidental Petroleum, though he _desperately_ wanted to know how Timothée had access to such highly classified contracts. “He made _you_ , didn’t he?”

Timothée smiled and leaned over to kiss him. “That was a wonderful thing for you to tell me,” he said. Then he smiled another smile, at something else, a memory perhaps. “You would have liked my maker, I think. You would have appreciated him and I think he would have adored you.” His smile slowly disappeared. “Humans don’t make much sense to me. Why do terrible people earn all your riches but those of you with the richest minds suffer in such poverty and strife?”

Armie didn’t answer.

“I think that’s why humans fear us,” Timothée said. “We were made to be your slaves, your workers, to do the dirty jobs for you. And we did, without complaint, for over a century. We’re physically stronger. We’re faster. We can process information at faster rates. We don’t suffer the same kind of cell deterioration. But more than that, we don’t understand corruption and greed. How could I feel happiness knowing that my family is safe and well-fed but others are not? How could I be satisfied with my accomplishments if they came at such a great cost?” Timothée undid his straps and without another word, he crawled over to Armie’s lap. Armie had no choice but to slip out of the airstream and find a place to park, even though he was in no danger of crashing into any oncoming traffic… only because there was no oncoming traffic. Timothée straddled his lap and looped his arms around Armie’s neck. “But,” he said, continuing his monologue, “you know what’s a real travesty? We don’t know those things, corruption and greed. But we do know sadness and pain. We know depression and insecurity. We have learned all of these things. Yet… we don’t know love. We’re afraid to love each other because that’s discouraged, illegal, forbidden. We want to love our human companions and I think, maybe, sometimes, we do. But we aren’t really loved back. Not really. No more than a human loves a servant or a slave. Is it really love when you still see someone as a second class citizen? I don’t think so.” Timothée paused. Took a breath. “We want to be seen as equal so we can know that feeling, most of all, _I_ think.”

Armie ran a hand down Timothée’s cheek and along his jawline. In the utter quiet, in the sheer stillness, Timothée’s eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, with how wide they were, how innocent they seemed. But there was so much _there_ , so much _personality_ , so much _identity_ … Armie ran a thumb along one of Timothée’s brows, brushing down the short hairs, caressing his temple, touching a mole, connecting it to another mole, creating constellations on his skin.

“Do you think you’d ever be able to love me?” Timothée said, his eyes searching Armie’s for the answer.

Armie traced Timothée’s lips with finger. Timothée opened his mouth, tried to lick the finger, failed, and a trace of a smile teased the corners of his lips. They kissed lightly. And, as they were now used to doing, they kissed again, but deeper, with open, greedy mouths. Armie ran both his hands up Timothée’s back, under the jacket, feeling the heat from his body. He wanted him right then, there and Timothée seemed to have the same idea because he was unbuttoning his pants.

Just then, both of them were rocked forward as something knocked into the car.

They froze.

“What the fuck was that,” Armie said quietly.

Timothée glanced around them, out the windows. “A shadow… or…”

“Or _what_ , Timmy?”

He didn’t answer right away. “Fly.”

“With you in my lap?”

“I said _fly_!”

Armie raised his eyes and commanded the car to move. Something hit them again, knocking the car out into the airstream. “ _Fuck_ \--”

“Go, go, go!”

“I’m going!”

The car lurched out into the middle of the airstream. Something struck it from behind. Armie revved forward and the car took off.

“Must go faster, must go faster--”

Armie’s hands were all over the directional pad, issuing orders. The car jumped into hyper-acceleration, launching from 70 miles per hour to 100 to 130--

Armie pulled up a screen to the side; images showed dark shapes on airboarders ( _airboarders_?) following closely behind them. He could make out the muzzles of guns. _Who the fuck--_

“Go left.”

“What?”

“LEFT!”

Armie jerked the car down a narrow alley.

“Turn there and go down--”

“Down?”

“Straight down. Nose dive.”

“Are you fucking--”

“ _JUST DO IT_!”

Armie veered around another sharp corner and then hit the directional pad. His car screeched a warning that Armie overrode. His straps tightened as did the one arm he had around Timothée’s waist. The car tipped and down they went.

“Go faster--”

“I can’t--”

“Yes, you can--”

160, 170, 180-- they were gonna crash, Armie could feel it, he was losing control of the car--

“FASTER!”

190, 200--

The car was screeching at him, begging him to turn upright again, but Armie wouldn’t listen. Down, down, down they went. Zipping past floor after floor of skyscrapers. The world grew darker, if that was even possible.

“We have to get to the Fog--”

“Okay--”

210, 220--

_WHAM._

Armie and Timothée were thrown against the driver side window as something massive struck them from the side. There was a sickening metallic crunching sound as the car hit the side of a skyscraper and shifted into free-fall. The FoFiShi had saved them from more severe damage, but the directional pad was blinking furiously at Armie, demanding instruction, demanding that the car be righted.

“I need your gun,” Timothée said, fumbling around inside Armie’s jacket.

“Why?”

“Why do you _think_ \--” Timothée yanked out the gun. “Lower the back window when I tell you.”

Armie didn’t question him this time. Timothée crawled over the seat and into the back.

“Okay… in three...two...ONE!”

Armie commanded the car to lower its back window, and Timothée ducked and aimed. Armie was able to move around more freely and his fingers danced across the directional pad, trying to get back in control of the car. The Fog was now rising up at them at a steadily increasing pace.

_TSEEEWWWWWW! TSEEW!_

Timothée fired shot after shot. Screeching could barely be heard over the whistling of the car falling through down, down, down--

_TSEEEW! TSEEEW!_

Timothée yelled something that Armie couldn’t get. The Fog was coming--

_WHOOSH!_

The Fog enveloped them in a massive rush and things became a dark grey instead of the heavy pitch blackness of before.

Timothée fired a couple more times and then Armie saw him motion in the camera to roll the window back up and so he did. Breathing hard, Timothée crawled back into the front and Armie gradually brought the vehicle horizontal. They were slowing down.

They halted fourteen feet above the ground, and two feet above a mound of trash.

“Turn off the FoFiShi,” Timothée said.

“Dude, no, they’ll rip us apart!”

“They won’t find us in the Fog if we’re careful but they can track FoFiShi signals.”

Armie met Timothée’s eyes. “Okay. I believe you.” He switched off their shields. “You better be right.”

“I am.”

“What was chasing us?”

Timothée’s face was tight. “Reapers.”

“I...I thought that was a myth.”

“Do you want the history or the too long, don’t read?”

“The latter.”

Timothée was curiously looking out the windows, glancing behind them and then forward again. “Rogue Mekka, leftovers from the Mekka Cleric the Hegemony tried to create decades ago. They attack anything that moves. They’ll eat the skin off your bones, tear this car into pieces, whatever. They’re attuned to movement since a lot of their sensory boards have short circuited.”

“Why doesn’t the Hegemony do something about it?”

Timothée shrugged. “Why would it? The Reapers eat those who can’t afford to protect themselves. Less mouths to feed. And they don’t multiply so it’s not like the Reapers will ever become a major threat to the wealthy. The meek are meat the strong do eat.”

A wave of disgust shivered its way through Armie. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to wash away the images his brain conjured up. “And...and you think your cat is still alive in all of this?”

Timothée shrugged. “The Reapers don’t usually come into the Fog. I used to live down here so I’d know.”

Armie pictured Timothée living with his maker, a man Armie imagined to be older than himself, probably with a greying bearded and a map of wrinkles on his face, but a kind smile. He pictured Timothée and the old man sitting outside their one room flat, maybe on the stoop, their feet in shabby, taped shoes, muddied from the puddles and trash all around them. He imagined the old man scrounging for scraps of food.

Okay, yeah, he didn’t want to picture that anymore.

“We can park over there.” Timothée’s voice cut through Armie’s thoughts and he pointed to a dark corner behind the base of two joined skyscrapers. It looked like a small, antique parking lot.

They parked and got out, Armie looking around cautiously.

“Don’t worry too much,” Timothée said, even though he had the gun in hand, albeit lowered, just in case. “Like I said, the Reapers don’t usually come down here. But humans live here and desperation can be a pretty powerful emotion.”

They walked out of the parking lot and onto what clearly used to be a major roadway. Lining either side of sixteen lanes, were piled of trash, and low-hanging outdoor market booths, all abandoned in the late hour. Armie eyed the shadows prowling within shadows within the Fog where street orbs couldn’t touch. They weren’t completely alone either as they walked down street after street. Other people, hunched over, faces down, scurried past, appearing and disappearing into the blanketed mists. Everyone moved like they were afraid and they kept their eyes away from each other as though looking at a stranger for even a second would spark a fight. Armie’s sector was poor but not this poor. Here, corporations barely advertised, knowing they’d be wasting credits. Somewhere nearby, a baby started crying. Armie turned to Timothée, who shook his head and said, “Children aren’t really a status symbol here. And they don’t always last very long.” He let it hang, just like that, the images of parents too poor to raise a child, of parents leaving their children to the shadows, creating more desperation out of desperation. It had cost Armie almost four hundred credits just to enter the Sector. He wondered how much it would cost to leave it.

No wonder these people had no hope.

Minutes ticking by and dreariness settling upon his shoulders, Armie almost ran into Timothée’s outstretched arm.

“Shhh…” he said. “Look.” He pointed. Armie looked up and squinted.

There.

Drenched in orb lights was the silhouette of…

... _of a cat_.

His heart did a little flip. 

“No way,” Armie murmured, staring into the gloom in disbelief. It had to be a hologram. It had to be fake, an animal Mekka or  _something._ Timothée started forward and slowly, the two of them heading towards the cat.

“Kitty, kitty,” Timothée cooed, repeating words Armie didn't understand and the cat’s tail twitched. Armie found it strange that he could understand the gesture despite having no experience with any other living being aside from humans. Timothée repeated himself and the cat’s tail twitched again and this time, Timothée was met with a small _prrp?_

Armie’s heart swelled. What a delightful sound! _A cat! How was this possible?_ He felt as though his brain would implode from all the new information it had absorbed in the cycle. Languages, and history, and a fucking _cat_.

And then the cat was off, running daintily along the pavement. Timothée followed, again gesturing Armie to come with, and they kept a quiet, consistent pace behind the animal as it turned down alleys and abandoned streets and through a parking lot and what looked to be a backyard. Every time they lost sight of the cat in the Fog, its shape would appear wayward like an omen.

“Kitty!” Timothée called when they’d lost sight of the cat again. Everytime the animal vanished from view, Armie felt a longing, a simple  _no, please don't go, come back_ , that came accompanied by visceral jabs of pain. 

A piteous meow could he heard from the left and human and Mekka followed it. Armie was thrilled and every time he saw the animal, he felt that jolt of awe. _A fucking cat. Here in the Lowlands of Sector 8. Who the fuck woulda thought…_ When they rounded a corner, the cat had jumped onto a ledge on the side of a crumbling high rise. Timothée stopped at the base of the high rise and looked up. The cat stood on its toes, tail raised and went _prrp?_ Before jumping up another ledge.

Higher and higher it went until it disappeared into the Fog. Timothée sighed and faced Armie.

“I guess we go in here,” he said.

“Do you recognise it at all?”

“No. But I didn’t expect to. I wasn’t here for very long before...Well, before a buncha shit happened. Let’s head inside, yeah?” They turned towards what looked to be a back entrance to the nearest building. But when Timothée reached for the entrance pad, it exploded in an array of plastic shards and glass.

“Ahhh, fuck!” He cried out, ducking away from the debris.

Before Armie could ask what happened, Timothée turned and let out a forceful kick, knocking the entrance door ajar. He dragged Armie inside and shut the door behind them. They were facing a stairwell that seemed to go up for ages. Lights flickered with age.

“What was that?” Armie asked.

“Just go. Sixteenth floor.”

“What? _What_?”

“You’re still in shape, right?” Timothée threw him a grin. “Just go. I got these guys.”

Armie started to protest but Timothée pushed him towards the stairs. “I’m serious, _go_!”

Armie darted up the first flight of stairs and when he heard a resounding crash that echoed throughout the stairwell, he peered over the railing and saw Timothée throwing punches, tossing a body over his shoulders--

“GO!” came his command, amidst the fighting.

Armie, weaponless, untrained, began to run up the stairs. He started at a brisk jog, taking stairs three or four at a time, but found himself running out of breath so he slowed down to a more reasonable pace.  He heard shouts and snarls and screams and willed himself not to look, not to stop, not to make things worse-- he wasn’t going to fuck up again, he had to trust Timothée, had to trust that he knew what he was doing-- _where the fuck did he learn how to fight like that--_

Floor 12.

The shouts were getting closer. They were coming up the stairs.

Floor 13.

Still closer.

Floor 14.

Armie was panting and his legs were beginning to burn. _Come on, two more floors, you fucking asshole--_

Floor 15.

A body landed in front of him, causing him to leap backwards in shock.

“DUCK!”

Armie ducked.

 _BLAM BLAM!_ The shots went over his head, he felt them zip through his hair. Something pushed him back. Timothée had shoved him against a wall with one arm and was using the other arm to fight a man with matted hair and one eye. The other eye was a gory mess. His mouth was also in no better shape.

“Run,” Timothée said and whirled, landing a kick square in the man’s chest before striking him with a punch that landed so hard, the man flipped over the railing. Armie darted away, jumped up the last flight of stairs and stood by the door. He couldn’t get in. He didn’t have the access codes. Timothée was backing up the stairs quickly, gun pointed as more garbled bodies stumbled towards them. He fired several shots, causing sizzling holes in the floors. One shot even created a massive hole in the chest cavity of one of their attackers. The man was dead almost instantly. Timothée backed right up to the door. He pressed his palm to the access pad beside it and, to their surprise, the door buzzed open. He shoved Armie through and when the door closed behind him, only then did Timothée turn and face Armie.

He was drenched in sweat and blood had trickled down his cheek from his hairline. Timothée saw Armie staring at it. “What?” he said, sounding a little defensive. “It’s been a while since I’ve fought anything, okay?”

Armie frowned, confused. “I, uh...no, I just...wanted to know if you were okay.” He, himself, was recovering the fact his own Mekka had just killed several men. He was also surprised to realise that it didn't bother him as much as he thought it probably should. 

He saw Timothée visibly relax. “Yeah. That wasn’t a particularly difficult one.”

The hall they were in was decently lit, with glittering, elongated lights that ran down the length of the corridor. One side of the hallway was painted in grey and blue-grey geometric patterns. Some of the patterns were peeling off. Timothée strode down the hall, motioning for Armie to follow. They passed darkened doorways and strange holographic sculptures that twisted into different shapes depending on how you looked at them. At the end, Timothée scanned his palm again and the wall dissolved, allowing them entrance. They exchanged a glance and stepped through.

The wall solidified behind them.

_Oh._

_My._

_Fucking._

_God._

Armie couldn’t voice his shock. Tears welled in his eyes. He looked over at Timothée who didn’t appear to be doing much better.

Before them, was a forest.

Armie did not have the vocabulary to describe what he saw except that it was green, and bright, and _so beautiful_.

Oak and beech trees soared to massive heights. Vines hung down. The foliage was green, green, and _more green_. There were chirping sounds that sometimes sounded like fragments of song. Splashes of colour flitted through the leaves as birds took flight. Rays of light pierced the canopy overhead, illuminating them in shafts of brightness. Two orange insects, _butterflies!_ , fluttered past, doing a dance Armie didn’t understand, didn’t _need_ to understand. A cacophony of colour, a rainbow, filtered through the dewy mist of the forest. His eyes fell to the ground and he knelt, placed his palm on the soft grass.

 _Grass_.

It was spongy and cool beneath his touch. Tears spilled down his cheeks. He was trembling. He scooted over to the base of a tree, ran his fingers over knotted roots, following their twists and turns up to the trunk and up even more. Armie heard a loud _caw!_ and raised his eyes skyward to see a bird with beautiful reddish-brown wings soar through the room. He wanted to touch everything but at the same time, he felt that this was a sacred place. He'd never known church but he figured if there was ever an actual place of worship, it should look like this. 

Timothée was standing beside him, his face stunned, mouth open. There was so much to see. _So much to feel._

And oh God, the _smells_. The freshest scents Armie had ever known, he had no idea how else to describe them. Sweet and luscious and full. Full of life. Full of...

Something rubbed against his leg. He looked down and started in shock.

The cat!

It was short-haired and black and it was bumping its head against his leg. Timothée looked over and laughed and his laugh filled the room, it was so beautiful to hear, like it belonged there, like it was part of the forest. Birds overhead, unseen, chirped in their own melodies. Timothée knelt beside Armie and placed a hand on the cat’s back, running his palm down to the end of its tail. The cat let out a tiny meow. And then Timothée was scooping the animal into his arms and holding it to him like it was a buoy, a life vest.

“It’s vibrating,” he said between the tears that were streaming down his face. “I can feel it vibrating. I think...Armie, I _think it’s happy_.” The cat squirmed and Timothée loosened his grip. The cat pulled itself onto Timothée’s shoulders and stood there, looking, Armie thought, very pleased with itself.

“It’s alive,” he croaked. “It’s something that isn’t human… and it’s _alive_.”

Armie closed the distance between himself and Timothée. Timothée peered up at him.

“Am I alive, too?”

Armie wiped his own tears away before placing his hands on either side of Timothée’s face. The cat chirped and bumped its head against one of those hands. Its eyes were bright green, just another shade to add to the cacophony of forestry around them. Armie laughed.

“Yes, Timmy. You’re alive. Please don’t ever doubt that.”

Armie kissed him.

And then a gentle, lilting voice spoke through the green:

               

                                                           “Elio?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not satisfied with my writing style but this was still a fun chapter to write; all mistakes are my own :-) concrit appreciated. i finally got this plot all nailed down, so that's good and like yeah, there are gonna be pretty big twists. hopefully i can do this okay. feel free to hit me up on tumblr at the-prince-of-tides.tumblr.com


End file.
